`su` (mostly) uses pam for authentication and pam has a module called pam_wheel which checks group membership of the authenticating user. In short, by adding auth required pam_wheel.so group=becomeroot to the file `/etc/pam.d/su`, only users who are members of the group `becomeroot` may become root using su. Now you make sure only your user EMERG is a member of the group becomeroot. Some distros have/use the group named `wheel` for that. groupadd becomeroot #add the group becomeroot to your system gpasswd -a EMERG becomeroot # add the user EMERG to the group becomeroot Further reading: pam (7) pam_wheel (8) groupadd (8) gpasswd (1) and many distros have explaining comments in `/etc/pam.d/su` as well