Nokia designed Harmattan thinking that it will be the next major platform for them and they had to be serious about it. I think aegis-thing is mostly done to comply with common requirements from companies to have easily and securely wiped phones, and to protect users from malicious software.

You can see with mount command that they are using aegisfs filesystem for directories containing sensitive user data. I assume this is encrypted filesystem.
Can someone confirm that it has encryption? If it has, we probably don't need to take care of encrypting stuff by ourselves.

EDIT: It is possible that aegisfs gets enabled only when you start using MfE account, depending on Exchange server policies. It'd be nice to know more about when and generally what data gets encrypted.

at 1st: sorry for my bad english :-)

to be root you must in file /etc/ssh/sshd_config the entry
PermitRootLogin no change to PermitRootLogin yes

thats the things i´ve done to go root like n900:

1.) activate developer-mode in phone -> settings -> security
2.) login in terminal as user: ´devel-su´, Password= ´rootme´
3.) keep own user-password: ´passwd user´
4.) open winscp with ´user´ and your own user-password
5.) in winscp open terminal (STRG/CTR+T) and type ´cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /home/user/´
6.) now you can in change and save the file
7.) take N9 in your hand and open terminal -> ´devel-su´, Password= ´rootme´ and type ´cp /home/user/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config´
8.) then type ´pkill -o sshd´ or just reboot, and you should be have full root-privileges and you can login as root.

hope this help you.

As was discussed already, opening root ssh access is not a good idea. Use regular "user" user for ssh access, and gain root rights with devel-su.

I had root login via SSH permitted already on N9 after activating developer mode.

in WinSCP/Putty?
Whats the Username in WinSCP/Putty to work with Rootprivileges?

the latest update for SSH disables root logins

lrn2ssh winnabs.

You're not getting it.

SSH consist of two parts -- server and client. You are always connecting from client to server. On N9 is running server on which you can connect from your PC with WinSCP/Putty or other client.

First you need to change password for default user on N9. Open terminal and type "devel-su", when prompted for password, type "rootme". Then you have local root shell access. Now, type "passwd user", which will change password for default user. Type anything you want to be your password. Now, logout -- press Ctrl-D or type "logout".

Now, on your PC start Putty and try connecting to your phone with proper IP address as user named "user". When you are asked for password, type whatever you typed before, when you were changing password. Now, you should be successfully logged to your phone. If you want root privilegies, just type "devel-su" and password is again "rootme".

It's not neccessary, but advised you will change password for root too.

I hope, you'll find this little guide helpful.

When was it? After latest update to openssh-server I was still able to connect as root. Hmmmm. Obviously, reboot is needed to restart server. Tested it just now, you were right.

I changed the user password, developer password and root password, and can log in under root through ssh