root login

bscho · 10-06-2014, 09:06 AM

I am using Mint 16 and want to login as system administrator.

When I try to login as root in a terminal it says system administrator is not allowed to login from this screen.

How do I login as root?

rokytnji · 10-06-2014, 09:21 AM

cntrl+alt+f1 or ctrl+alt+backspace to drop out of X.

Code:

sudo -s

then password, should have a root prompt.

Code:

startx

May work. May not. I do not log into root except for in the terminal when I need to do something.
Better check it before you wreck it.

yancek · 10-06-2014, 10:33 AM

The root account is disabled by default on Ubuntu derivatives like Mint and you need to use sudo and your primary users password. Mint 16 is not supported any longer and no updates are available.

Habitual · 10-06-2014, 11:13 AM

login as yourself at the console and issue

Code:

su - root

enter your usual password

rokytnji · 10-06-2014, 01:32 PM

As a experiment. I tried this out in my Ubuntu spinoff "Linux-Lite 2.0"

It worked and broke lightdm at the same time. ~/.Xauthority & ~/.ICEauthority permissions became owned by root and one could not log in anymore as user ,(but root could login), until that problem was fixed by me.

So as Yanek said.

Quote:

The root account is disabled by default

So there will be hell to pay if logging into Ubuntu or Mint as root.
Better to login as user and do what needs to be done via gui with

Code:

gksu <app name>

Like I said

Quote:

Better check it before you wreck it.

bscho · 10-06-2014, 03:25 PM

Thank you all for your help.

I used sudo -s to login as root.

I was using Mint 16 which has a fault because I wanted
to use sudo apt-get install bluefish. I solved the problem by
installing Mint 17 and the command works OK.

yancek · 10-06-2014, 03:55 PM

Quote:

I was using Mint 16 which has a fault because I wanted
to use sudo apt-get install bluefish.

And that of course failed because 16 isn't supported and the repositories are not available. Mint 17 should be good for almost 5 more years.

JeremyBoden · 10-17-2014, 06:18 PM

root is not disabled on Mint.

There is a method of giving it a known password.

TxLonghorn · 10-18-2014, 06:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeremyBoden

root is not disabled on Mint.

There is a method of giving it a known password.

Confirmed.
You can create a root login in Mint by creating a password specifically for root.
But there is no conceivable reason for doing that. Everything you need to do can be done with su, sudo or gksudo.

yancek · 10-18-2014, 08:00 AM

Of course you can create a root account in Mint/Ubuntu but it is not enabled in a default installation as I indicated in my post which is why the OP was having problems. Using sudo on Mint is simpler than going through the process of creating a root account and if one doesn't want to use sudo, don't use Ubuntu/Mint.

JeremyBoden · 10-18-2014, 10:04 AM

<pedant>The root account already exists.</end pedant>

Robert Dinse · 11-11-2014, 06:35 PM

I don't want to start a religious war, but, to enable root logins type:

sudo passwd root

It will prompt for your account password then the root password twice, after that you will be able to login as root.

If you want to enable graphical root logins, edit /etc/mdm/mdm.conf and in the [Security] section add AllowRoot=true

You will need to restart mdm or reboot. If you're using lightdm or others there are similiar commands for their conf files.