[Wolves] finding my roots

Simon B SimonB at geek-web.co.uk
Sun Oct 9 09:52:14 BST 2005


On Sun, 2005-10-09 at 08:29 +0100, Steve Parkes wrote:
> Rob Annable wrote:
> > So, like half the people in this list, I've got a new install of
> > Ubuntu. There are a couple of things that I need to do that I don't
> > seem to be able to and my first guess is that it's because I'm not
> > logged in as root.
> > 
> 
> hey Rob
> 
> the first user you create in Ubuntu (during the install) is on the 
> sudoers list and can use sudo to 'become' root.
> 
> there is no root user as such but you can get a root shell by using 
> 'sudo /usr/sh' if you prefer a shell over sudoing each command

It's also possible to use the root user as a semi-normal user (*ie able
to login as root), by just using 'sudo passwd root'. 

Just as useless info its also possible to do this on OsX to be able to
login as root, but that's irrelevant.

Anyway, with Ubuntu root by default it actually a disabled account by
default, so setting its password will enable it.
I tried it once and something started to act a little bizarre, as some
things asked for the admin user passwd and other things asked for root
passwd so im not sure if it breaks anything too badly.

Also in my opinion I have always found through experience that logging
into a X session as root is never a really great idea as it can be
detrimental to the system.

 think it is also possible to lock the user again, someone correct me if
this is wrong, though i think it is done by putting a hash (#) in front
of the password string in the /etc/shadow file.

Cheers SimonB




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