Strategy to allow emergency access to colocation crew

Posted by itsadok on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by itsadok
Published on 2010-04-14T11:00:02Z Indexed on 2010/04/14 11:03 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

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security

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colocation

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best-practices

I'm setting up a server at a new colocation center half way around the world. They installed the OS for me and sent me the root password, so there's obviously a great amount of trust in them.

However, I'm pretty sure I don't want them to have my root password on a regular basis. And anyway, I intend to only allow key-based login.

On some cases, though, it might be useful to let their technical support log in through a physical terminal. For example, if I somehow mess up the firewall settings.

Should I even bother worrying about that?
Should I set up a sudoer account with a one-time password that will change if I ever use it?
Is there a common strategy for handling something like this?

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