Ubuntu

I am listed as admin in user accounts but don't have admin status

Asked by Allen Myers

I installed 16.04 as superuser, and I am listed as administrator in User Accounts. However, I am unable to do some admin tasks, such as adding fonts to the fonts directory. No one else uses this computer.

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Rusty Shackleford
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Best Rusty Shackleford (shackleford071250) said : 		#1

Administrators are just standard users most of the time - you need to temporarily escalate your privileges to do admin tasks. Tasks like updates, changing wifi settings, and so on will prompt you for your password. But other tasks require you explicitly telling the system to raise your privileges: you typically do this through two commands - sudo or gksudo.

Both of these commands are run from the terminal application. The gksudo command is the one to use if you want to open a graphical application with administrative rights. So for installing fonts I'd suggest entering the following in a terminal:

gksudo nautilus /usr/share/fonts &

After you enter your password it should open a file browser. If you are installing fonts in a different location alter the path in the command as needed. You can also navigate to the fonts directory once the browser is running. Copy your new fonts into this location. And back in the terminal enter:

sudo fc-cache -f -v

to rebuild the font information files.

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Allen Myers (allen306) said : 		#2

This worked like a charm. Thank you very much.