Note: It is assumed that you have already enabled the root account using the following command:
Recently after installing a fresh new copy of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, I found that root ssh access was set to sudo passwd rootwithout-password by default now. What that means to you is that if you are trying to ssh to your server with your root account and password, you will receive an access denied error. In order to overcome this limitation, you will need to edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow root password logins through ssh. As shown below, comment out #PermitRootLogin without-password and add PermitRootLogin yes.# Authentication: LoginGraceTime 30 #PermitRootLogin without-password PermitRootLogin yes StrictModes yes
Once the file is saved, you will need to restart the ssh daemon in order for the changes to take affect using the command below.
service ssh restart
After the ssh service is restarted, you should now be able to login through ssh using your root account and password.