I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.1 ...
this much I know .
I need to have root permissions to modify grub.cfg.
However I just cannot login as root . When asked for the password I get 'not authencated'. There was only one account created and I set a password for that . The same password does not work.

I even tried recovery mode. Still I cannot get the necessary permissions.

You can't log in the GUI as root in Ubuntu(unless you changed it while installing the system), so you log as normal user open the terminal and use the command sudo before the command that you need to run as root and then enter your user password. I hope this helps.

Regards

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I don't run Ubuntu however, I will still try and be of help. I believe from Ubuntu 10.10 root access to the box was disabled by default however, it is still enable it. The first user account however, normally has sudo access. So you can run administrative commands by pre-pending sudo e.g. Alternatively, you can choose to log in as root as shown below
Working as root however, will be a challenge as the environment variables for this user are not set. Running the commands via sudo would be a preferred approach.

Assuming grub2 is installed - formerly grub config was /etc/grub.conf, you are advised not to edit /etc/grub.cfg as this will be re-generated on kernel updates and I guess on reboot as well. Not certain of the latter. To make your desired changes persistent, do so from /etc/default/ filesystem. You will likely find some grub configuration file there.

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Thank you!! Thank you!!