Alright I love Ubuntu, I love every single little working feature, except for one

The way root is used


I perfer a root account, Guess I'm just funny that way


Anywho I have activated the root account by way of the "sudo passwd" command. But alot of applications that work through Gnome and KDE will ask for a root password from time to time and the root password they happen to ask for is not the one I created with "sudo passwd". I also have this problem anytime I try to use the sudo command for anything else. This isn't as much of a headache for me as I am the main user but the other run into serious permissions problems. I don't think alot of them can even use sudo.

There's probally a config file somewhere that needs editing I just need to know where to go to make my root account uniform.

ok i had this problem too...

what you have to do is restart your comp

when you get into your grb loader enter into recovery console mode (should be the ubunbtu loader right under the one you normally boot to)

it will log you into root and you can chage the password there using the "passwd" command

this make it where you can log in as root and make changes using super user
i also ran across that sometimes when you are trying to make changes and it ask for a password it is not the root password you need. it is hte password you created when you installed ubuntu.

The root password is already changed. You don't need to be in recovery for that. And using my password for root only works in my account. When other users enter my password they get an error.

Well, the password you enter for "sudo [anything]" will always be your user's password, not root's. That's the entire point of sudo - you can elevate a single user's priv's w/o having to hand out the root password to everyone. As far as other people on the box not being able to sudo, they likely aren't in the admin group. To fix this, you can run:

usermod -G [groupname] [username]

[groupname] in this case should be admin. Be aware, though, that this essentially gives everyone on your box root privs, since sudo -s will give them a root shell. I don't know of any way to change the behavior of gnome/kde, but the ubuntu default is that your user's password is what unlocks administrator mode, not root's.

However, all that being said, I agree with you. I do not like the "ubuntu way" of dealing with root privs. At the very least, I wish they had offered a choice between sudo and su in the initial setup.

but you can use su in ubuntu...you just have to set the root password...it always worked for me

Usermod did the trick


It's not exactally the way I'd like it but it will make do