Default Root Password?

[sway]

Is there are default password for the root account? Because I just can't log in to it. I wanna install some extra packages. I can't remeber during the installation that it ever asked me for a pw for the root account.

[p!=f]

Originally Posted by sway Is there are default password for the root account? Because I just can't log in to it. I wanna install some extra packages. I can't remeber during the installation that it ever asked me for a pw for the root account.

What's the root password after I install? How do I use the root account?
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/d...ation/faq/root

Too lazy to look around?

[sway]

omw, so sorry =] i was really in a hurry and btw thank you for the quick response.

[percy]

Hi,

I've found out a better way howto become root, I've used debian before so I rebooted the laptop with a debian installation cd in.
Then I started a shell and just mounted the root filesystem under /mnt.
Then I run nano-tiny /etc/shadow and erased the root password.
That givs you the right to create a new password for root after you reboot again however you have to do that in a another tty.

Cheers

[Juergen]

That doesn't sound much easier than just

sudo passwd root

BTW I haven't found any task I couldn't do with sudo (maybe with -s) or gksudo.
I really don't know what you all need that root passwd for.

[p!=f]

Originally Posted by Juergen That doesn't sound much easier than just sudo passwd root BTW I haven't found any task I couldn't do with sudo (maybe with -s) or gksudo. I really don't know what you all need that root passwd for.

Try to change your hostname without changes in /etc/hosts. And then try to sudo. Have a Live CD by hand.

[Juergen]

Try to change your hostname without changes in /etc/hosts. And then try to sudo.

Proves my point: you can even shoot yourself with sudo

Hmm. I just found out that I don't have any boot-menu(-delay) on my system here at work (Virtual PC and so no multi-boot).
Perhaps I should change this before doing more experiments - single-user mode may be necessary

[rb1235]

I am also not able to su as root nor to unlock the root password. When i typed
sudo passwd root
I got:
unable to look up 'popeye' voa gethostbyname()

what did i do wrong?

[p!=f]

Originally Posted by rb1235 I am also not able to su as root nor to unlock the root password. When i typed sudo passwd root I got: unable to look up 'popeye' voa gethostbyname() what did i do wrong?

That's what I was talking about some posts above. Did you try it?
Looks like you changed your hostname without a correct entry in your /etc/hosts. You have to use LiveCD or the single user mode to change hostname to match the real one.

example:

[~] > cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.1.2 popeye.home popeye

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

[~] > cat /etc/hostname
popeye

If you change the hostname, sudo is not able to find the entry to match your new hostname. It probably "works" vice versa so changing "popeye.home popeye" to "popeyes.home popeyes" will also lead to the error.

[Gyom]

I am a new Ubuntu user, and just installed the hoary-rc-install (a week ago). At the beginning everything worked perfektly before I made apt-get upgrade on the 7th of April (at night) just before they released the actual hoary stable version (04/0. The system was upgraded with a new kernel which appear to create some failure when my system is loading.

First question: Was Hoary-rc-install-x86 a development release? Does release candidate mean final release?

Second question: How can I upgrade my system especially kernels without remove older kernel images (I was under Fedora core 3 before, and I could keep all my kernels)??

I found another strange and relevnat thing:

It is possible to change root password with the gnome interface without any password prompting before, that's really bad!!! And "su" command doesn't seem to require the same password as "sudo", what the heck is that?

Why are there two different password to become a super user?

Thanks to people who will reply

Gyom