Can't seem to become root in Konsole

[jacatone]

When I'm in Konsole and type su then my password, I get a Authentication failure result. The password works every where else. I don't get it.

[dibl]

Re: Can't seem to become root in Konsole

try

sudo su

then press Enter

then it should ask for your password.

[jacatone]

Re: Can't seem to become root in Konsole

Thanks, I'm used to Mepis which looks the same as Kubuntu. Isn't sudo a temporary root access command? Will sudo su override that?

[dibl]

Re: Can't seem to become root in Konsole

Well, I'm not really the expert, but it goes something like this:

Once there was unix, and it had root. Root was the name of the administrative user who had ALL the rights to everything, and could add users, give them their privileges, delete them from the system, etc.

Then came Linux, which started out like unix, with the root user.

Then came Debian and its little brother Ubuntu, and somewhere along the line, they came up with the notion of the Super User, a temporary/virtual being who could be invoked by lowly users like you and me with the simple prefix "Super User Do", or "sudo" for short, just for one command. So that command is performed with the power of the Super User (root).

In practical terms, remembering back to unix, it saves you running 2 consoles, one as root and one as your user login. It works fine, once you get the hang of it.

And yes, logging in as root with

sudo su

will give you the

#

root login prompt, and you'll be in position to do serious damage. Be very careful doing that -- it's not a good idea for normal usage purposes. There was fellow who posted yesterday who mysteriously couldn't open files on his desktop -- probably he copied them there while in root mode! :P

[SheeEttin]

Re: Can't seem to become root in Konsole

Or, one might consider "sudo -s" to get a root shell. I prefer it just because it's part of sudo and is probably less prone to weirdness.

There's also the story of that guy who... what did he do? Something with permissions? Anyway, it made his system basically unusable. One has to be careful with root.

[penguin.ch]

Re: Can't seem to become root in Konsole

I'm used to Mepis

Which in turn sticks to "good old" Debian habits in reference to the super user.
In case you miss that, feel free to "reset" Kubuntu to Debian / Mepis behaviour:

http://www.penguin.ch/dokuwiki/doku....o#root_revival