Please no silly comments about the dangerous boogyman. Used Properly root Is quite safe. I have been using root now about twenty years with no problems.

So if anyone can tell me how to change the login screen to accommodate logging into root I would be most grateful. root is already activated with passwd.

Thankyou BurnieS

You don't say what display manager you are using, but most of them have a config file in /etc that you can edit to allow root logins. Or you can set a non-graphical runlevel, log in at a console in any name you like and then use startx.

You might find some guidelines here. Though this is Fedora, lxdm is a display manager that Debian often uses too.

I wouldn't do it, but your system, your rules.

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What Hazel says about runlevels does not apply to Debian. Debian considers runlevels 2-4 to be the same, as composed to, for example, Slackware, in which runlevel 3 boots to the command line and runlevel 4 boots to a graphical display manager.

Before SystemD there was a little script you could install and run to enable traditional boot levels in Debian with the sysv init system, but it didn't work with SystemD. It was called something like "sysvrcinit" or something close to that and worked like a charm.

A web search for systemd debian boot to command line turns up a number of articles that might help in a SystemD environment, but I haven't tested any of them (that's why I'm posting the search link so you can check them out).

A wise (???) man once told me:

Earlier implementations of systemd had a graphical.target and a multiuser.target with a default.target which was a symlink to one of them. That let you set your own default, much as you used to do by editing inittab. But I've just checked my own Debian 9 (that's Squeeze I think) and it doesn't have those any more. It's all become much more complicated and automatic. Grrr!