Hey..
I was wondering if there is any way of giving root permissions to selected users on my RedHat machine. I personally do not log in as "root" but use my own username instead. I sometimes find it troublesome when sometimes i get access denied and have to log in as root to fix a problem. I want to give my self, as in my username, root permissions so that i can log in with my username and still have all the permissions of a root?

This is not a good idea from a security standpoint. One of the 2.5 million reasons why Windows has security problems is because everything is always run by Administrator or SYSTEM. One of the advantages to Linux, or any Unix-like operating system, is that the system is functional to a user without that user having enough access to erase every file in the system.

That being said, Linux also needs to be user friendly if it is going to continue to grow and propser. To make it more friendly to you, is there any single command that you run frequently that you are constantly being prompted for the root password for?

i dont think that is possible, but the 'su' command can give a user root access (or any other user for that matter) if they know the password for root. Although this wont allow you to log in as root by using your own username, it will temporarily allow you to use root's privelages while logged in under your username.

To have root permissions with your username, edit /etc/passwd file and change the user ID number to zero.

for example... if you want to amy get root permissions:

Original /etc/passwd file:

amy:x:505:100::/home/amy:/bin/false

here..amy's User ID is 505

now... amy with root permissions changing user ID:

amy:x:0:100::/home/amy:/bin/false

I hope it helps.

thanks..changing the user ID certainly helped!

Be careful changing your user id to 0 to get root permission. I did this with RedHat 9 for the same reason you just did and I attempted to change my desktop in my username. When I did this something messed up and I can no longer log into that user name. I was going to just delete it and not worry, but because it was technically root I can't delete it and it isn't listed in the user names. So, it may seem easier, but once you start figuring stuff out it is much safer and just as easy in the long run to use su

just use sudo, instead of giving a normal user access to the whole system by changing the user id

I was going to suggest that you chmod 4755 whatever binaries are giving you problems. This is much easier and more secure because you are giving yourself root access per applications instead of the whole system.