How to disable password prompts?

[kaitlynh1988]

Hi,

I am using Linux for the first time today and I don't know any advanced functions. I was wondering if there was a way to stop being asked to enter my password? I'm asked when I turn on the computer, after a screen saver, and before installing a program. Since my computer is old and I don't have it in a public place I'm not worried about password protection. I will probably need step by step instructions since I've never used anything other then windows before now, I hope that is ok?

Thank you,

Kate

[colyn]

If the computer will be connected to the net you need password protection. Otherwise your information can be stolen since no password protection is in place. In addition rootkits will be easy to install by an outside source..

[Roken]

You can enable auto login so that you don't need a password to log in. Go to the Administration menu/Login screen and you can set up an auto login for a user.

As for passwords when performing administrative tasks, you can't disable those, though most of the time you won't be doing this (only when installing programs and updates for now). You do very quickly get used to entering your password for such things, and it's one of the reasons that Linux is more secure than Windows and considerably less vulnerable to malware.

[dagon]

...I'm asked when I turn on the computer

menu > control center > ( System ) login screen:
check "log in as ... automatically"

after a screen saver

menu > control center > screensaver:
uncheck "Lock screen when screensaver is active"



Oskar

[odo5435]

Once you have your system set up the way you want it, you'll find you rarely need to use the password. The only times you'll need to is for updates and for the occasional new app that you'll want to try out. I also found it irksome at the start but I quickly (like in a few days) got over it and now I reckon I spend much less time entering the password than I used to spend running virus checkers, malware checkers and Spybot under Windows; and thats gotta be a bonus.

[kaitlynh1988]

Thanks everyone

[nicci]

Disabling password authentication every time is an iffy thing. For novice users I highly discourage such things. Also it is a very bad thing to run as root. Most linux desktop distributions make this difficult to do, but, its not impossible.

For most desktop users once a system is set up and tuned the need to disable these prompt is fairly minimal. Maybe a prompt daily for a password when doing updates. If you're a developer this becomes more of issue where different packages are loaded, etc. This becomes very dependent on user preferences and skill.

With Windows UAC may be disabled (Vista maked a lot of gripes, Windows 7 is pretty cool about it, Windows 8 makes it much harder). Windows is inherently much less secure because of the fact that most users run as administrative users in the first place, and, there are some architectural differences that make linux a little more secure out of the box.

All of this said, however, you may want to disable password prompting. Please be careful. If you break something, remember that you own (and are responsible for) all the pieces left over.

Disabling sudo and gksudo prompting, is a matter of adding this line:

Code: Select all

Defaults   !authenticate

to the sudoers file. This should be done, at a terminal prompt, with "sudo visudo".

For more information on the /etc/sudoers file please read Marius Ducea's nice article: http://www.ducea.com/2006/06/18/linux-tips-password-usage-in-sudo-passwd-nopasswd/

And for more information on PAM (of which sudo is part) IBM has a good article: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pam/index.html?ca=dgr-lnxw9d&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=grsitelnxw9d

[humb]

Thanks for the web page about disabling passwords. However, I firmly believe developers should make the use of passwords optional instead of mandatory. Here's why:

1) In my case only I touch my computer. I see no need to keep entering passwords for every little thing such as [for example] making a configuration change or installing/uninstalling software. Under absolutely no circumstances will I ever have multiple accounts on any computer I own, not even with reduced priveleges. Multiple accounts = multiple configurations -- too much hassle.

2) Could my system be hacked from outside my home? Possibly. Then again, I could also be hit by a meteor when I venture outside. Of course it's possible! I've been using Windows forever with all "protection" disabled, and so far no boggie man has shown his face. In fact, I've had far worse problems with security measures than with whatever it is they're trying to protect me from. Naturally this isn't just with any Linux-based OS.

3) How does entering a password protect me from a mistake I make that wrecks my configuration? Since Linux asks for a password for just about everything, I for one will enter the password prompt as soon as I see it without even caring why it's asking. After all, as I see it, the only reason it's there is because some developers are simply too set in their ways and somehow believe that making paswwords mandatory will make the OS impervious to just about anything.

4) The worst of all: Linux does not require passwords where it should, nor is there any way to impose password protection on some very important things. Just the other day I went to open a file and the first thing I saw was a long list of files I opened before, including some that are extremely private. For this there is no protection of any kind, anyone can sit here and see all I've done and read my private stuff, and I can't protect it. All it allowed me to do is delete a file called 'recently-used.xbel', but the problem is that every time you do something you have to stop and deep deleting it. You can't tell the OS not to write to it.

Bottom line: make passwords optional not mandatory! As it stands right now they don't protect me at all - I see it, I enter it, no exceptions - end of discussion!

[humb]

After researching the topic a little, I found out how to eliminate this password scourge by simply running the whole thing as root. For those of you who are interested in doing it too, these are the steps I followed:

Open terminal and type "sudo passwd root". It will prompt you for a password for the root account. Enter one. After that, simply go to "Preferences" and "Login Windows" and there, simply click where it says to premit admininstrator login (this is disabled by default). Then log out and log back in as "root" with the root password you chose. It's NEVER bother you for a password again unless you reboot or log off. This reduces the frequency of entering the password from 100,000 times to just once. I might add that, unless I'm mistaken, you'll have to type "sudo" again. I've typed that word trillions of times.

Despite the dire warnings of something horrible that will happen to my system, no problem so far. If it happens, so what? Reformat and start again, or make a full backup and restore. These warnings remind me of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster - plenty of hype but in the end, nothing.

Just one question. For some reason when running as root, the OS doesn't see my sound setup. Any ideas why not or how to fix it? Everything else works.