SFTP to root files with root login disabled; is su or sudo possible?

[srjonah]

To improve security on a RHE server of mine, I disabled root login using my sshd_config. Of course, I can no longer login as root via SSH/SFTP on this machine. I'd like to keep root locked off indefinitely, but I can't figure out another way to edit system files (owned by root) via SFTP.

I have been su'ing over to root from an admin account while connecting via SSH, but I'm used to using a graphical client for SFTP-based edits. In the past, if I wanted to change httpd.conf I would have opened up BBEdit and used its FTP/SFTP tool. If I wanted to send up a file to /root I would've used Interarchy or another tool like it.

I don't know of a way to tell an SFTP program to su or sudo, or if there's even a way? I realize I could be using vi or emacs or another command line editor, but my systems are somewhat complicated and it will be hard to do things that way. Thanks for the help

[sawbuck]

You can su- to root using WinSCP in combination with puTTy. Check the following link, open source and developer is aware of forum requests.
http://winscp.sourceforge.net/eng/about.php
HTH

[srjonah]

Oh, unfortunately I can't run WinSCP, since I'm using Mac OSX 10.3 with Darwin. I did look to see that there's a Unix version of putty, v0.54. Do you think I could use that in conjunction with an SFTP alternative, like Interarchy or BBEdit (Mac programs, I realize they're not as well known,) to solve my problem? Thanks

[sawbuck]

Putty will give you access to root by using su-. I edit the system files online using pico making backups first of course. Will that work for you?