Linux Mint Forums

In Mint 8 my user password worked when signing on as root. With LMDE it does not. Is there a way to logon as root? Is there a password already in place with an install?

newyorkpaulie wrote:In Mint 8 my user password worked when signing on as root. With LMDE it does not. Is there a way to logon as root? Is there a password already in place with an install?

What do you mean signing on as root? Login as root? I think you login from your user account with password. Then do sudo command to run administrative commands.
Other than that, you can do "sudo -i" to actually change to root.

indaymadel wrote:

newyorkpaulie wrote:In Mint 8 my user password worked when signing on as root. With LMDE it does not. Is there a way to logon as root? Is there a password already in place with an install?

What do you mean signing on as root? Login as root? I think you login from your user account with password. Then do sudo command to run administrative commands.
Other than that, you can do "sudo -i" to actually change to root.

I meant logging in as "root" and then when asked for password, my user password sufficed.

Change GDM's settings.

#sudo
[type pass]
#gdmsetup
Configure gdm and allow it to login as root

Although why anyone would ever need to run Gnome or any other DE/wm as root is beyond me.

Not only is it not a bad idea, it is also a good way to trash your system.

Have t go with craig's assesment on this reading scorp123 post in a simalar thread about 3 years ago. He told how in his first year working with one of the distro's in the owrkplace accidently wiping the hard driveof a server while doing admin work in a desktop. As he said that day he learned the importance of complete backups

Mint (Ubuntu) never allowed root login by default (root account has a random password and root login to the GUI is disabled). You must have set the root password yourself and enabled GUI login in Mint-8.

As others have said, it's pointless and generally a bad idea to login to the GUI as root. There is simply no need to do that. Learn to use sudo in the terminal.

Lolo Uila wrote:Mint (Ubuntu) never allowed root login by default (root account has a random password and root login to the GUI is disabled).

Ubuntu yes, Mint no. Mint sets the root password to be the same as the user password. You can test this by using 'su' (not sudo su) to start a root terminal or logging in to webmin which needs root as the account to make changes to printers. Graphical login is disabled though.

Lolo Uila wrote: As others have said, it's pointless and generally a bad idea to login to the GUI as root. There is simply no need to do that. Learn to use sudo in the terminal.

+1

or gksu if you really need something graphical to to have root access

If you want to give your root account a password: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootS ... %20account

sudo passwd root which you will be familiar with from ubuntu ( & LM 9, LM 10) to set root password
for LMDE open terminal as root
backup these two files first
/etc/pam.d/gdm3
/etc/pam.d/gdm3-autologin

open these files with gedit in root to edit
comment (add #) this line in each file as below
#auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet_success
save files and login as root

When I need root access for a series of commands, I simply open a terminal and type then enter the CLI commands, for example, you might want/need to change file permissions/ownership on files moved from another machine or use apt-get/aptitude for updates. You could also use update-manager followed by to clean up your code cache.

You can move things around with CLI commands or type or or whatever your favorite file manager is to simply right click on the files to change permissions/ownership as an alternative.

cwsnyder,

You should never try to run a GUI program using sudo. Doing so can and will, over time, break your desktop in multiple seemingly random ways. Use gksu or kdesu instead of sudo for GUI programs run as root.

Fred

Fred wrote:cwsnyder,

You should never try to run a GUI program using sudo. Doing so can and will, over time, break your desktop in multiple seemingly random ways. Use gksu or kdesu instead of sudo for GUI programs run as root.

Fred

Thanks for the warning. I hadn't run into that information before.