As per subject...

Was playing around with an installation the other day, was kind of bored during my lunch break

But on completing on the installtion, dound that I hadnt supplied a root password during the install.

comments appreciated.

thanks

on ubuntu(which i'm guessing is your distro), your root password is the password for your user. example: my user name is soppy. my password is piglet(not really. just an example). when i do for the password i put piglet. thats the way a default ubuntu install works. hope I help!

By default, the root account is disabled in Ubuntu**. (Your user password is NOT the root password--it is a sudo password, and give you only the access defined in the sudo configuration)

To enable the root account, simply do this in a terminal:

sudo passwd root

You'll be prompted for your USER password, and then you will be prompted to enter the new ROOT password.


**A complete departure from Unix and Linux standards, and--IMHO--the only real flaw in Ubuntu.

i guess i just chose the wrong words. thanks for clarifying. i meant to say that it lets you EXECUTE root commands. as usually there is no root user used. it was early in the morning...sorry for any confusion.

Thanks for that...

I have found Ubuntu to be quite different from the other distributions I've been more used to.

(pix)
> A complete departure from Unix and Linux
> standards, and--IMHO--the only real flaw
> in Ubuntu.

Wow, if it's the only flaw that's really saying something, especially since it can be worked around with a single command.

I read somewhere in Ubuntu literature that the reason it was set up with no root account is -- surely there must be other reasons as well -- for security purposes. That is, to hack into an administrator's account would require compromising both the username and the password rather than the password only, as "root" is pretty easy to guess. I dunno, I'm a newbie and no expert. Would there have been any other reasons?

That is exactly the reason, and it is not a weakness. It is a little bit of "security through obscurity", but that's not a bad thing.

Rather than enabling the root account, if you should happen to need it for more than a couple of commands at a time, you can simply execute at the terminal prompt, enter your user password, and you'll have a root terminal to use.

Thanks for "sudo -i". That might almost make me like Ubuntu again.....

Splitting the semantic hair, I use "flaw" to describe this feature of Ubuntu only because it is a departure from the norm and--to me at least--is an irritant. I had never thought about the security ramifications.

In the future, perhaps I should just say I don't like this "feature"......

In the terminal

sudo su -

you are root DON'T forget to exit are your done.