Comments on: Ubuntu: How to enable the root account

By: skippy steve

skippy steve — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 13:14:32 +0000

Hey, ghezal! If you boot with a liveCD, you can fix it pretty easily. Probably have to add admin to your user’s groups.
Why did you change your admin user to non-admin?

By: ghezal

ghezal — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 12:40:39 +0000

my user was administrator and when i change it to standard now nothing is working, no root, and not admin, it need the password when i give the password is says sudoer problem

By: isaaclw

isaaclw — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:34:12 +0000

Ok… Maybe I’m just confused.
1) you can disable sudo as is posted

sudo protects the computer, because a hacker can’t just log in as root and have full privleges, instead they have to log in as a regular user (guessing the username) and THEN run sudo, most likely having to put the password in twice (which really doesn’t decrease it that much…)

In any case, I have no idea why anyone thinks it’s more of a security risk… Someone mentioned multi-user computers. If you make an “administrator” just make sure other users aren’t in the admin group. And it actually defaults to NOT put them in any group, so you’re fine.

Anyway, I want to rsync data as root, so I need a root login…

By: skippy steve

skippy steve — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:59:37 +0000

“Debian itself most certainly does not.”– Oh, sorry, my misunderstanding. It’s been a long time since I messed w/Debian ;^)
And thanks for clearing up the correct/intended way to use sudo- that actually makes sense(allowing a user to use it for a specific task); I can see its usefulness for some cases in that context.

By: Orbit

Orbit — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:43:42 +0000

I agree with you about the Ubuntu forums skippy steve, and it puzzle’s me also. Please don’t let this stop you from trying Debian though, as the author mentioned, Ubuntu is the only distro that forces you to use “sudo” in place of “su” by default. Debian itself most certainly does not.

@ Viraj Gadkari Sudo is just a Linux/Unix admin tool, and it has nothing to do with Debian why it is used in Ubuntu, and it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the way it is used. Sudo is supposed to be used by the administrator, to allow a user(s) to run a specific command(s) as superuser (root), or as another user. It’s not supposed to be used instead of a root account.

By: skippy steve

skippy steve — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:51:23 +0000

Yikes! That whole “sudo” thing is what kept me from ever really using Debian/Ubuntu. On any system I admister I have root access and a normal user account. No other users have the root pasword; they don’t need it. They also don’t need “sudo”, ’cause I’m not giving them the chance to screw stuff up with a root-enabled(’cause that’s what “sudo” does) account.
I’ve never trashed a computer as root…I reinstalled a few times when I was learnng Linux because I didn’t know how to fix my mistakes…never anything critical, just didn’t know how to make stuff work, so the easy path(learned from years of using MSWindows) was to reinstall and try again. I got over it.
The reason I bothered to comment is this: I don’t understand the condescension, and even outright hostility, of some people on Ubuntu forums, towards people asking about having a functional root account. Please enlighten me, if you will.

By: Hiero

Hiero — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:19:54 +0000

My, that thread deteriorated, didn’t it?

Personally, I think the Ubuntu insistence on sudo is both overkill, and overly pedantic. But, they have one of the best, if not the best, installs in the Linux market today, so . . . I live with it.

By: Dave=Turd

Dave=Turd — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:46:33 +0000

What a useless comment. Maybe you haven’t used computers long enough to learn that there’s A FRIGGIN’ LOT of stuff that you can’t do unless you’re root. And, I mean real root. Like fixing stupid nVidia drivers and other things. This whole “UAC-wannabe” stuff is a sham.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:00:26 +0000

I think Tadeas is a whiny little bitch.
why are you using ubuntu if you are so damn smart and think sudo is a waste of time? go use some other OS jackass

By: kuks

kuks — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:19:08 +0000

I agree with Tadeas: actually I do not understand sudo… If the “%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL line” is present in the /etc/sudoers file (as in the default configuration), you can do everithing as root WITHOUT being root. This really seems a nonsense to me…