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Is there root user privilege in ubuntu?

Asked by Derrick

hello,
I just installed Ubuntu 7.10 and it asked me for a user name and password during installation which i provided.i was believing that with such user name and password i will be the administrator of the system and have all privileges but i don't even when i want to used the other partitioned hdd i dont have permission to create or delete folders and also things like the adept manager i also need privilege for that too.can i someone help me or rather tell me how i can become the root user for the system so i can have all the privileges?

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Bhavani Shankar
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Roald (roald) said : 		#1

Hi,

For security reasons the account you create on install is not given root priviliges (Windows Administrator equivalent). You can however run commands as root by prepending sudo in front of them, like:

sudo ls

to get a directory listing in a terminal. For GUI based applications you can start by pressing alt-f2 and typing the command prepended by kdesu.

In both cases you will be asked for the password of the account you have logged in with (NOT a root specific password).

Hope this helps.

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Bhavani Shankar (bhavi) said : 		#2

Hello derrick...

You do have root privileges. You just need to use the sudo or gksudo commands.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

If you created a root user during install you may have some problems using it. It is automatically created anyway so I'm surprised it let you make another. This account is disabled (i.e. no way to log in as root) by default. However, it exists and is vital to your system working. If you also created a root account then there may be some conflicts. You can look under system - admin - users and groups to see what's up. There should be a root account there. Don't mess with it. Changing how root works will totally bork your system. Use sudo. See the link above for the rationale behind using sudo. In short, it's more secure.

Hope it clears your doubts...:)

br,

Bhavani Shankar.

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Best Bhavani Shankar (bhavi) said : 		#3

Or If you badly want root privileges in spite of going through answers above try:
$ su
$ password: rootpassword
in case you cant login as root (assuming you havent set your root password) follow these simple steps..
$sudo passwd root
$New Password: typeyourpassword
$Retype password: Again
This will set your root password..

Then you can log in as root by doing as mentioned above,

hope it helps,

br,

Bhavani Shankar.

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Derrick (iyobosa-ero) said : 		#4

Great now i understand properly....ok...now i want to set the priviledges for the disk because i partitioned the disk into 3 parts one for the main system and the others for storing my files but when i want to create a file/folder it says i dont have root parmision to execute such task...any suggestions on that too??

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#5

You have to change the mount permission or change files permission or owner of the files on filesystem...
What kind of partition are you using...? ext3 or NTFS
Please copy and paste here your fstab contents.
From a terminal
sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Thank you.

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Derrick (iyobosa-ero) said : 		#6

hello,
I am using ext3 partitioning and here is the fstab contents:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda2
UUID=342f1903-656d-4eac-8802-6b8e547c839e / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda3
UUID=1d5e4af9-adeb-49d6-81cc-54fb00773b6a /media/sda3 ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda4
UUID=f45d02f1-88ae-40cc-9ef8-42ab0d417aaf /media/sda4 ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda1
UUID=cdd73b29-8085-4e81-8c8f-bd91f4331328 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0 0

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Derrick (iyobosa-ero) said : 		#7

i think changing the file system from root to me (user) is better for me though

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Derrick (iyobosa-ero) said : 		#8

Thanks Bhavani Shankar, that solved my question.