From the time I installed SUSE v9.1 until a few days ago, the root user screen looked moreor less like the screen for an ordinary user. There came a day when, upon switching to the root user, I see nothing but YaST, occupying the entire screen. Clssing YaST ends the root-user session, and bounces me back to the preexisting user session.

I have no idea what has made this happen, but I would like to understand it. I would also like to fix it, because not everything that root can do can be done through YaST.

Does anyone recognize this sympton and have a fix for it?

I had the same problem with SuSe 9.3, it is probably coz you made a mistake while making the home account for ordinary user

I solved it by reinstalling SuSe

I have only one ordinary user on the system, which I made the same day I installed Linux. The problem appeared well after that, so my problem may not have the same oriin as yours. I am hopinig there is a less drastic solution to my problem; perhaps there was a less drastic solution for yours too.

Re-installation is indeed a little drastic
Have a look here (btw: this came from a google search for 'suse yast root kde'):
http://nixdoc.net/files/forum/about48666.html
Hope it helps!

The problem described in that URL is altogether different, as he says himself: he can't log in as root at all; that's a horse of an entirely different wheelbase.

But the problem here is solved. In the course of my newbie explorations, once when I logged in as root I clicked on the "Administration" button, wondering what would happen -- to me, in my naivete, "root" and "administration" are synonyms. What it actually means is "YaST", which is a shorter word which would require only a smaller button, and which would be describtive of reality. One also has no indication that pressing this button will result in a changed default -- it would be logical to expect, as I did, that whatever the button does is valid for the current session only. Clicking on "Menu" on the same dialog window allows one to choose e.g. KDE, among others. I have done this, and the problem is now gone.

I have learned a lot from the experience, as I have from each of the other unnecessary problems I have encountered in my first Linux experience: I now understand that screen, which I didn't before, and it is now cleaer to me how it is that a committee-designed horse turned out to be a camel. I am sure that, once I get this sort of thing sorted out, I will really like Linux, and even SUSE.

In all probability, the person who solved such a problem by reinstalling could have fixed it with the same "Menu" button.

Many thanks to those who responded to my request for help.

Great that you found a solution!
Just to make it clear for others with the same problem: where do you toggle this? I never recognized an 'Administration' button on my system, but I never logged in as root, so I may have missed it. Is it on the login screen or the KDE control center?

Please consider: working as root in a graphical environment is considered very unsafe. The suggested solutions under the above link should always be prefered (kdesu/su/sudo).

Along the bottom of this box is a row of buttons, OK, Administration, Menu, and maybe one or two more. If you want your root desktop to be FullScreen YaST, click on Administration. If you want to change the root desktop from whatever it was last time you were here, click Menu, where you can choose KDE, WindowMaker, and some others. Again, to be clear, whatever you choose becomes the default for next time and the future; the choice is not for the current session only.

Some privileged actions that one attempts as ordinary user do bring up a small dialog box for this purpose, so that one can give the root PW and enjoy royal privilege although remaining a peon. In other cases, one is simply repulsed because he isn't root. What is the rationale behind the difference between these two cases is beyond me; I think it has to do with horse-design by committee. The day may come (although I don't expect to see it) when Linux programmers will rationalize this sort of thing, rather than spending their time spawning more and more distributions that add little to the sum total of Linux attractiveness or usability. Requiring the user to keep yet another special arrow in his quiver to deal with the latter case after he has been blown off isn't really a user solution. It certainly isn't user-friendly.

How weird! I've never seen that button either... I usually do my updates/administration through my user account by entering the root password in YaST. Thanks for the warning

Maybe this comes with the KDE version. I am using KDE 3.4 on SUSE 9.1, so I may miss some SUSE-specific modifications. I don't have the choice to lock the root account to YaST.
That's actually the same as using kdesu, so this is already the safe way. Just running the whole graphical environment as root should be avoided.