Greetings and Happy New Year from Belgium to you all,

All my professional life, as a Computer Specialist working for the US Army, I have been using Billy Boy's products but, feeling that I was not learning anything new as far programming/developping, I decided to start learning Linux. Therefore, you can easily understand that I do feel like a young child who makes his first steps alone and that I am close to be an IGNORANT. I installed Kubuntu Distro on a dedicated had disk (hd0) and everything went fine. I even manage to have a dual boot system (Windows XP and Kubuntu) from my Linux drive or from my Windows drive.

I had my account created with a password, which password allowed me to enter the Administrator's Mode. Fussing around and trying to understand better the structures of the users organization, I made, I think, a stupid mistake (I told you that I was an ignorant): using the Users and Groups module of the System Parameters, I put myself in the root group!!!!! Since then, when I need to use the Administrator's Mode, at first, it told me that it could not find the path to 'su'! Then, as stupidly as before, I try to assign a password to the 'root' group and, since then, it does not recognize my password and the second password any more. I am stuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What could I do to step out of that mess? Please, try to help me!

Thanks in advance,

Jean-Philippe


PS: My native language being french, I might have made some mistake such as mentionning the Administrator's Mode instead of the Superuser's Mode. Please, forgive me!Greetings and Happy New Year from Belgium to you all,

It would probably be simplest if you just reinstalled. Next time, don't add yourself to the root group. Don't login as root unless you need to. You should only need to become root while you're setting up the system. Once everything's running you should just use a limited users account.
There are ways to login to a system where you don't know the password, chroot for instance. You could boot with a live CD and chroot into your partition on the hard drive. But your situation sounds complicated enough already, if you reinstall it will clean up the mess.

Thanks Andrew but, if I can, I would like to avoid to reinstall. This is the easiest way to do and I want to learn, even through the hard way! Would you mind giving me some info about 'chroot'?

Thanks.

Jean-Philippe

Welcome to LQ and Linux!

You are going to have tons of questions. Fastest way to get them answered is using

http://www.google.com/linux

Another way to fix it would be booting up in single user mode. Both methods require some knowledge and basic command line skills. Work your way through Google and come back here when you get stuck.

When you installed you created a user. That use was automatically placed in the admin group. Distributions in the Ubuntu family don't use su and root to perform administration. Being a member of the admin group is what's required. On the command line precede administration commands with sudo as in "sudo fdsk". When asked for a password use your personal one. The administrator can make changes to to items of the root user, root group. The command line is very useful but in the beginning favor using the GUI for configuration changes and learn command line by displaying information.

Try "oem" without the quotes as username and your extablished password. This will take you to the configure screens and will let you set your own username.

Actually, you have to run one more command from a terminal to create an actual account for your to use from now one and remove the oem account at the same time.

Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
Code:

sudo oem-config-prepare

Streeturchine,

I am trying to add the username you mentionned ("oem") but it keeps asking me the password that it does not recognize! I have the same problem with the "sudo oem-config-prepare" code.

Actually, when I start Kubuntu, it does not even offer me to login: it logs itself without asking me any password (which he would not recognize anyway)

Thanks to all for your help,

Jean-Philippe


PS: Please do not forget that I am a little child who needs a hand for to walk in the Linux world!

sorry i may have misunderstood you.

can you log in to kubuntu?

if so you want to know you'r root password ?

Streeturchine,

Yes, I can log into Kubuntu but automatically, without having to enter any passwword.
When I do need to use the superuser's mode, my passwword is not recognized and that happened after I put myself into the group 'root'. As I cannot use the superuser's mode, I cannot remove myself from that group.

As I told it before, French is my native language and, sometimes, it is not easy to express myself. Sorry!

Thanks,

Jean-Philippe

JP,

I don't know if this will help you, but here is a link to instructions on how to boot up the system as root:

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper#H..._without_login

The instructions are in section 19. Once you boot the system you may be able to run the "oem" commands without being prompted for a password. Or, you can follow the instructions on changing your passwords.

how's it going? Unless you set up a password for root and forgot it, in Ubuntu you don't have have a root password and thus cannot su or log in as root. Instead, you use sudo with *your* regular user password. (If you're running sudo while logged in as a user called mjacobs, type 'sudo command' and then enter mjacobs's password.) SO AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS RIDICULOUS POST YOU CAN SEE WHAT YOU MUST TYPE TO SET UP A ROOT PASSWORD -- WHEN THERE ISN'T ONE SET ALREADY.


were you ever able to su? I'm not sure why adding a new user to the group associated with the root login would stop you from being able to use su. Su doesn't work out of the box with ubuntu for security reasons. My ubuntu install is new and su doesn't work for me, so I'm going to walk you thru the commands below (I feel like such a linux master!)

WHEN I INSTALLED KUBUNTU, WHICH I'M CURRENTLY RUNNING, I COULDN'T SU. In ubuntu, you're expected to type sudo before a command (i.e. "sudo wlassistant") and then use the password for my user. (I.e. if I'm logged in as justin and my password is may2, I type 'may2' after I type 'sudo wlassistant'. Anything you were going to do with su can be done with sudo in this manner.

IT'S FOR YOUR SECURITY THAT SU DOESN'T WORK IN UBUNTU OUT-OF-THE-BOX -- sudo is safer because you're running one command at a time and thus can't forget you're still root and make a silly mistake. However, I like to be able to su when I'm going to run many commands

HERE'S YOUR SOLUTION
I just reinstalled linux. So I cannot use su right now, just like you (I can use sudo along with my user password -- IN UBUNTU/KUBUNTU, OUT OF THE BOX THERE IS NO ROOT PASSWORD AND THUS YOU CANNOT LOG IN AS ROOT OR USE SU -- BUT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO USE SUDO WITH YOUR USER PASSWORD).

I am, as I write, going to set up su for use by typing these commands -- you can see that su didn't work the first time I typed it (I was the password of the user I logged in with -- in Kubuntu you never set up a password for root as part of install -- you do it the way I do here):


THAT'S IT -- now you have a root password set up and you can use su and login as root. If you still can't it's because you somehow set up a root password earlier -- it didn't happen during regular install though -- and if you can't remember it you're "shi* out of luck" and should reinstall.

Tell me if it works!