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Unable to access root folder after upgrading to 11.04 beta 2

Asked by Ankur Jain

Unable to access root folder after upgrading to 11.04 beta 2, i am getting following error message "The folder content could not be displayed. You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of "root"." However I am the only user on system, so i should have the admin rights to access all folders.
Earlier i was using Ubuntu 10.10 and with 10.10 it was possible to access the root folder.

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mycae
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Best mycae (mycae) said : 		#1

This is not an error. Even though you nominally only have one account, to improve security each process is run at a low privilege level. For your normal day-to-day operation, you do not need to access the contents of /root (why do you need that?), so this is disallowed to prevent any malicious (or badly designed) program from corrupting your system.

If you need to escalate your privileges, you can launch nautilus with the "gksudo" program to run nautilus with administrative rights. You will need to enter a password so the kernel can ensure that the malicious program has not simply requested rights without human authorisation.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#2

by root folder do you mean / or do you mean /root ?

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Ankur Jain (decent-ankur) said : 		#3

hi mycae,
you answered my query. I am able to access /root folder by the way you suggested.

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mycae (mycae) said : 		#4

you should reallly not need to access it -- I have told you how as I believe in not treating users like fools, but be careful -- in no way should this be a normal method of accessing your computer.

 It will appear to "streamline" things for a while, but the cost is higher in the long run when you break your system by doing something you should not have with the additional privileges.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#5

Why are you messing around in the /root folder. It is nearly empty by default and there is no need for users to be working in that folder. You have your own home folder to store user data...