On Being root....

[Carroll Grigsby]

Rob Blomquist wrote:
> I am trying to get around having to play with Ubuntu's interest in keeping me 
> from becoming root in console and so on. I have no idea why, but maybe it is 
> to block people from running all the time as root, which I know is a pretty 
> stupid thing. I have not been at a root graphical desktop in years.
> 
> But right now I am in something of a pickle, as while I can su into root, and 
> open KDE's Root Console, I now cannot run Adept, Kuser, kdesu, or anything 
> graphical as root. Its really starting to bug me, as I am not a real pro at 
> apt-get, dpkg or any of that, and its a real pain right now to configure my 
> machine the way I want without the graphical side. Mostly, as between rpms 
> and deb based installers, all the packages seem to be named differently, and 
> I don't know what to ask for.
> 
> I am wondering if anyone has spent enough time, or has found a website that 
> lets us in on unblocking the root console, and all the GUI utilities that we 
> would like to use.


Rob:
Ah, yes, the old "Why can't I be root?" question again. It can be done, 
but I've forgotten the details. It's covered in the archives, and 
possibly in the wiki. FWIW, when I first installed Ubuntu last summer, I 
set up a root account, but I've since found that sudo works quite well 
for me and I haven't used the root account in a long time, and I would 
not do so if/when I do a reintstall.

-- cmg