user(s) question

[Tom H]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 11:41 PM, rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:
>
> When I set up Ub, it asked for a user name. It seems that that user
> has su privileges. 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 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... :-) ]
>
> 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?
>
> 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?

There are no usable su-to-root rights on a default Ubuntu install.
root is disabled by default and the first user who is set up (at
install time) has full admin rights by default (or as full as you can
get without being root).

There was a recent thread about renaming a user where, I think, the
conclusion was that you had to enable root temporarily and boot into
runlevel 1 in order to rename a user (or at least the first admin
user).

So you can enable root, boot into runlevel 1, rename RRR to RRRadmin,
reboot, disbale root, and create a non-admin RRR.