accounts and passwords in centos

sigint-ninja · 07-16-2012, 05:43 PM

hi guys,

when i first installed cent and created a user account, it said that the account was both root and user account..or something like that, but how come when i access a lot of applications / man pages i get told i need a root account to login? then enter my same password and its ok...how do i make my user account a root account? or can you not do this...(forgive me, i know very little about linux user accounts and am busy reading a book)

any advice appreciated

suicidaleggroll · 07-16-2012, 05:48 PM

I believe what you set during installation was that the root password would be the same as your user password. So there's still a distinct root account that's separate from your user account, it just happens to have the same password.

You cannot turn your user account into the root account, nor would you want to even if you could. Ideally you should change your root password to something secure, and if necessary you can set up sudo to allow your regular user to do a few select tasks that are normally restricted to root.

sigint-ninja · 07-16-2012, 05:50 PM

well the next chapter im reading is about root and user accounts...so i should be ok...

thanks for that...so its not like a windows system where you have an account that has admin rights. you actually use seperate accounts and elevate yourself when needed...this is very good for security i would think...

suicidaleggroll · 07-16-2012, 05:54 PM

That is correct.

Most Linux distros work that way, there are just a few exceptions...namely Ubuntu and its friends.

sigint-ninja · 07-16-2012, 06:12 PM

thanks man...learning quickly