I am trying to follow a guide to set up a 3 Internet dongle on an EEE PC net book running incognito.

Firstly I should ask: is there some preference? are some dongles better than others? ie easier to set up

This is the guide that I am using: http://www.greenhughes.com/content/using-huawei-e169g-usb-mobile-internet-modem-eee

I'm having trouble at the very early step of copying a config file into my /etc/ folder. I cannot simply mv - it tells me permission is denied. So I need to be super user to do this. but sudo is severely restricted.

I don't quite understand the message it gives me, saying I need to start incognito with debug mode present on the kernel command line.

Could someone elaborate a little bit on this message? why is the root password normally scrambled for security reasons?

so does this mean that I need to run from debug mode every time I am installing some software or fiddling with the system? what is the purpose of this? is it so that n00bs can have a secure system that they cannot mess up too easily?

Thanks,

Sy

You need superuser access to perform several of those operations. There is no way around that.

Have you tried performing a 'sudo su -'? That will get you a root shell on most distributions.

Root passwords in most distributions of linux aren't scrambled, it's just not stored in plaintext, its encrypted.

I have just found the answer in anonym's recent post detailing the changes in the latest version:

- The root user is now disabled. If you need root privileges, add
"debugmode" (without quotes) to the kernel command line in the boot
menu to set an empty password for root, then use the su command
to get root privileges.

I guess it was fairly obvious. I would still love to hear feedback on the merits of various Internet dongles...

Sy