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I type in root, it says root is not currently installed and tells me what to type in to install it; I type that in and I get the error message "Unable to locate package root-system-bin"... I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 and I just installed it onto an older HP laptop...
I'm having similar issue, and my end goal is to be able to use root user on the terminal. This is the first time using ubuntu, in redhat and suse, I was able to use root.
I type in root, it says root is not currently installed and tells me what to type in to install it; I type that in and I get the error message "Unable to locate package root-system-bin"... I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 and I just installed it onto an older HP laptop...
I might be missing something here, but "root" is a user. Are you typing root into a login prompt or at the terminal after you've logged in?
You might find this link useful. It's where I started anyway. It covers some good basics without being boring.
so, how do you use root user from the terminal?...with suse I was able switch to root user in the terminal...if try the same with ubuntu I get the same message joe got
By default you use sudo. If you want to do something that root normally does you do
Code:
sudo updatedb
for instance which will run that command as if it were run by root. For persistence there is
Code:
sudo su
or myriad other ways. If you want to actually login as root you have set a root password, which I don't remember how to do at the moment, but it is easy to find using google. Other ways to become root can be found here.
thanx a lot, I was able to use sudo, but unable to use sudo for everything root does, for instance init...I would get that same message that root is not installed
Not a problem. BTW to set a root password you should be able to just do
Code:
sudo passwd
as your administrative user and then su into root as normal. GUI logins used to take some fiddling with GDM but that may or may not be the case anymore. Just to get ahead of the curve, I'll go ahead and say that it is recommended not to do these things, but I tend to believe that sometimes it's neccessary or just a lot easier to log in as root and then exit when I'm done.
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