Switching to Root in Slackware v12
 

Ok,

Alot of problems that I have involve needing to switch to root to make changes and various other ordeals, but everyone tells me to use the command "su" everytime I use this in Konsole,it does nothing and when i use Alt+f2 and type "su" to make the run command, nothing happens. How Do I make myself root, I thought I was root in the first place, I typed it in at the start up prompt before I Typed startx...WHATS GOING ON HERE?!!!

After you install Slackware, and the first time you log in... yes you are root. You need to add a user (adduser).

You might want to have a glance at the slack book. It has some great content for people just starting out, and those that have been around linux for awhile.

If you're already running as root (UNWISE) then su is redundant, and won't really do anything.

They tell you to su to root at the terminal because you shouldn't be starting X as root :) That's why nothing is happening - because you are already root.

Just type 'startx' as your normal user, and then when you type 'su' in a terminal, it should ask you for your root password.

When looking at a terminal, if you see "$" as the prompt, you are a regular user. If you see "#" as your prompt, you are root.

I also suggest taking a look in the Slackware forum -- there are some great tip thread there!

I think a lot of advice from Ubuntu, Suse, Debian users may not be applicable to Slackware.

My Slackware 12 by default installed only the root user and there is "NO" ordinary user account created in the installation! I haven't bother to add one yet.

The Slackware and Slax families have always been relax about allowing root log in with the desktop. They don't restrict the the root user to the terminal.

Just like ntfs-3g many distros like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and Suse require the user to build and install it. Slax is shipped with it pre-installed so that upon installation every ntfs partition will be mounted and the user can drag and drop (read/write) any files in the desktop, while other distro like Ubuntu would not even allow a user to view even the content inside a Windows ntfs partition! So Ubuntu's way of doing things does not apply to other Linux.

If the command "su" yield no response that means you are the root user already!

I don't think anyone is 'relaxed' about allowing root. I more think it is assumed that the average slack users would know not to be logged in as root 100% of the time because of all the extreme consequences it can have.

maybe another command may help you "who am i ",
you'll know who you are and other more information!

Slax is a livecd distro so it doesn't matter if you are root, and in most cases it is better to be root in a livecd, what is applicable to a livecd is not applicable to an install. Slackware is not relaxed about root access, its a do-it-yourself distro so they expect that you would make a normal user account with out being prompted to. Also it is not really considered a good security practice to run as root 24/7

Until recently Slax is an installable distro but the installer script was not maintained in some recent releases.

Many Live CD distros are also very easy to be installed into a hard disk or thumb drive and Slax is one of them.

Slax also have a family of its own with 5 to 6 others distros that are all installable.

I agree that it is safer not to log in as root. My point is out there it is a not uniform standard and one approach for all does not always work. To log in as root briefly even to a desktop for the purpose of doing work on the system isn't a serious danger and is supported by many big distros. One can log in as root to Ubuntu desktop too. It is a simple change in the setting.

To me to support not to log in as root and not to use it is two different things.

Slax is an installable distro but it is not meant to be installed, much like KNOPPIX and is made as a live distro running from a flash drive or a cd-rom. Also there should be no reason to use x as root