Root user permission

[Marcelle Soares-Santos]

well, let me put my curious finger on this discussion.

in my computer I have set a root password with "sudo passwd root", but,
some applications ask me my psswd (the passwd of the first user I've
created). why does this happen? shouldn't they ask for the root
passwd? I think this would be more logical...

I would like to change my passwd, but because of that I'm afraid I'll
have trouble in running those applications. If I change my password
what is gonna happen? Those applications will ask me my new passwd or
the old one?  Will I have to memorise three different passwds (the
actual, the root and the new one) ?!

Is there a way to make all the applications ask for the root passwd
only? Is that something "non-recommended"? Why (not)?

sorry if my questions are silly. actually, I've been wondering about
them for a long time, but never had the opportunity to ask...

thanks, marcelle.

On 10/27/06, Matthew Nicholson <sjoeboo at sjoeboo.com> wrote:
> are you sure your root? the default set up is that root has a random
> password, so, unless you changed the root password, and then su'd to
> root, odds are you are just a "regular" user, who has sudo rights.
>
> to set a root password:
>
> sudo passwd root
> <it will prompt twice for a new password>
>
> to become root:
> su
> <it will prompt for root password>
>
> to change ownership of file/directories:
> chown <options> <user>:<group> <files>
>
> to change permissions:
> chmod <options> <permissions to change to> <files>
>
> however, you should avoid root at all costs. just using sudo <command>
> should do the trick. I never actually su to root, except on the very,
> very rare occasion where i want a root shell.
>
>
> On Sat, 2006-10-28 at 01:00 +0530, Cheatah 0#@!^ wrote:
> > Inspite of me being the root user of my kubuntu 6.06, i dont have the
> > permission to access or change all the files in my kubuntu, like
> > /boot/grub/menu.lst and many others.
> > How can i change this so that i have the permission to access or
> > change each and every file in my system??
> >
> --
> Matthew Nicholson <sjoeboo at sjoeboo.com>
> sjoeboo.com
>
>
> --
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>