[Wolves] finding my roots

[Alan Pope]

On 09/10/05, Steve Parkes <sparkes at westmids.biz> 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.
> >
>

The Ubuntu wiki [1] user documentation pages [2] are a good place to start.

> 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
>

Not *quite* true. There *is* a root user, you just don't know the
password for it.

For example:

First switch to root user using "sudo su".

alan at hactar:~$ sudo su
Password:

Show we are root (the prompt gives us a clue!).

root at hactar:/home/alan # whoami
root

Go back to normal user.

root at hactar:/home/alan # exit
exit

Change the password for the root user.

alan at hactar:~$ sudo passwd
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

Switch to root using su.

alan at hactar:~$ su -
Password:

Prove it.

root at hactar:~ # whoami
root

Cheers,
Al.


[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDocumentation