[sclug] how to get into administrator mode on kde control center under kubuntu?

[Will Dickson]

John Stumbles wrote:
> 
> If I run Control Center and select System Administration -> Login 
> Manager and click the Administrator Mode button I'm prompted for the 
> _root_ password in a window titled 'Run as root - KDE su' to run command
> kcmshell kdm -embed 52432611 -lang en-US
> 
> But [k]ubunto doesn't _have_ a root password [wail!]

Use your own password; your sudoers privs should suffice.

> 
> 
> (What I actually want to do is change which users on this system are 
> allowed to shutdown the system - can anyone upclue me on how to do that?)

None of the following are probably the "right" way to do it, but:

1. KDE control center, session manager, (various shutdown options). This
assumes you run the KDE automatically-start-X-as-soon-as-you-boot thing
("kdm" IIRC), which is the case by default, but which I encouraged to
leave very shortly after installing.

2. sudo halt

3. Hack /etc/inittab such that Ctrl-Alt-Del does what you want it to,
then have users use this to shut down.

HTH

Will.

PS. Don't try to re-enable root logins; I did, and everything went
flaky. Whether these two events were causally related, or whether the
latter was caused by some other incompetence on my part, is an open
question, but I reinstalled shortly afterwards, didn't do that again,
and it's been very happy ever since :-)

PPS. If you want to be root for an extended period (and who doesn't) the
command to memorise is "sudo -i".