su - problem

[Tom Atkins]

When I try to sue su - I get a message that my account has expired and to contact my system administrator, which is me. I have no idea what to do. sudo -i works OK!

Any help whould be appreciated.

Tom Atkins

[ajgreeny]

Ubuntu does not use su to get root permissions but sudo instead.

You can use sudo -i as you have found and also sudo su which is almost the same, but not quite. sudo su will give you a prompt root@hostname:/home/username whereas sudo -i will give you a prompt root@hostname:~# the difference simply being the folder that you are starting in, ie root, as opposed to your own home folder.

For more info on all this see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

[bodhi.zazen]

Ubuntu does not use su to get root permissions but sudo instead.

You can use sudo -i as you have found and also sudo su which is almost the same, but not quite. sudo su will give you a prompt root@hostname:/home/username whereas sudo -i will give you a prompt root@hostname:~# the difference simply being the folder that you are starting in, ie root, as opposed to your own home folder.

For more info on all this see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

For a brief technical overview so sudo -i vs sudo -s vs su , see :

Difference between sudo su and sudo -s

[-humanaut-]

You can enable su but i'd highly recommend you do it through an SH shell vs BASH. SH is not integrated into the root account like bash,ksh,tcsh,etc...

[ayenack]

If you right click on Applications>Edit Menus>System Tools>Root terminal
you'll have a root terminal at hand in Applications>System Tools>Root Terminal

It's an easy way to get what you want. Don't forget to exit the terminal when you're done.

Edit:- Although bit strange about the account having expired. Anyone got an answer to this (timed out?).

[-humanaut-]

That account expiring is strange. Is it a multi-user system by chance?

[wojox]

You can also look at RootSudo

[Tom Atkins]

It is a multiple user system. I have my wife set up as a seperate user. I will go the sudo root in the future. I had been suing su - in the past with no problem.

Thanks for the help.

Tom Atkins