For security purpose you might want to disable direct SSH login as root.To alleviate the risk, we can create a new user, who has less privileges, but is more appropriately suited to everyday tasks.When you need the power of an administrative user, you can access that functionality through a command called Sudo.First of all login as root and create an user:
useradd sshadmin passwd sshadmin
Now add this user to wheel group from WHM
WHM -> Security Center -> Manage Wheel Group Users
OR from command line:
usermod -G wheel sshadmin
Now open /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set
PermitRootLogin no
Restart the ssh service:
/etc/init.d/sshd restart
Now you can ssh to server as user sshadmin and run the command “su -” to switch to root user.
Now the thing is that “su -” asks for root password. If you don’t want to remember the root password then you can add the user sshadmin to sudo user list. Add below lines to /etc/sudoers
sshadmin ALL=(ALL) ALL
Now run the command “sudo su -” and it will directly switch to user root without asking password.