I needed to change something, some system value or other, and I thought it would help if I did it as root. Stupid I know, but lucky for me Ubuntu prevented me from su-ing as root because I didn’t know the password. Gave me time to reconsider. But still, it is my system and if I want to su as root I should be allowed. I remembered something I read from one of the forums:
1. you type sudo passwd root
2. system responds: [sudo] password for youruser:
3. you respond: yourpassword
4. system responds: Enter new UNIX password:
5. enter root’s new password
6. system makes you verify the new password et viola!
Yeah ok, I know logging in as root is not a great idea but you know it is my system and I oughta at least know all the passwords.
3 Comments
This assumes, of course, that the user in question has sudo privileges in the first place . . . which need not be true.
Yep, you can change privileges but by default (at least everytime I’ve installed Ubuntu) you get sudo when you set up your default user and Free Software Magazine has a great tutorial on user privileges in Ubuntu.
Thanks for the comment, I didn’t know anybody was listening.
By default, the user created at install time (presumably the person doing the install), is added to the admin group. Only the admin group has sudo permissions. Additional users created after the install are not in the admin group, by default.
Root has no password by default, so the only way to run things as root is for a member of the admin group to use sudo.