user(s) question

[Nils Kassube]

rikona wrote:
> When I set up Ub, it asked for a user name. It seems that that user
> has su privileges.

More precisely sudo privileges because the root account is locked and 
only sudo works. The initial user created during the installation is 
member of the admin group and can use sudo to gain root privilege. All 
users created later don't have that privilege as default.

> I'd like to use that name as a non-su user for
> normal logins. If it was RRR, can I change it to RRRadmin, for
> example, keeping the same UserID and privileges, and add another
> non-su user named RRR? Or - is it better to just add RRRadmin as
> administrator, and set RRR as a normal user?

I would create a second user and add that user to the admin group. After 
that, check if you can use sudo from that new account. If it works, 
remove the initial user from the admin group.

> I assume RRR is not root, but it didn't ask for a root pw. [Also, I
> have a rtkit group - I hope it's not what it sounds like... :-) ]

No, the initial user is not root but a normal user who can use the sudo 
command to gain root access. See [1] for more information about the use 
of sudo / root with Ubuntu. I suppose the rtkit group is used by the 
package with the same name …

> RRR would have a modest, but pretty good password, and RRRadmin would
> have a very good pw - but - not one I'd like to have to keep entering
> with lots of sudo's. Is there a way, while logged on as RRR, to fire
> up a terminal as RRRadmin, become su, do the tasks as needed, and
> exit terminal?

You can use the command "sudo su" in a terminal to get a root shell. But 
didn't you get the password strength wrong? IMHO my personal files are 
much more worth than the system files. A theoretical virus could do 
nearly as many bad things if it runs as a normal user - it could wipe my 
personal files even without root privilege. It is no big deal to 
reinstall the system if is compromised but it is much more work to 
restore the personal data. Therefore I think, the password for the 
normal user should be as strong as the password for the account with 
root access.

> I copied about 200+G of files to the new Ub, and added an old 1T data
> disk, but they had the old UserID from Mandriva [but the same RRR
> name]. In trying to reset them[with sudo], I got a 'can't do it' msg
> for some files. Is there a way to ID which files have a 'strange' ID
> that I can't change in a mass-change operation, or something that
> would force the change anyway?

I suppose you used a command like

sudo chown -R $USER: /path/to/the/data/

and that gave the error? Well, you could search for files not belonging 
to any known account with the command

find /path/to/the/data/ -nouser -exec ls -l {} \;


Nils

[1] <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo>