[PLUG] Ubuntu System Administration

[EJ Vincent]

On 12/1/2011 6:25 PM, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Dec 2011, Ronald Chmara wrote:
>
>> /etc/hostname
>     D'oh! Of course.
>
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuTime
>     I'll look there.
>
>> root is created by default, with no password login capability.
>     Well, I've always had a root login (with password) on that system. And I
> could log in as root for administrative work.
>
>> You can take a look at /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, the "!" in shadow
>> is the "don't allow this account to login" feature.
>     There ought to be a way to assign a password to root; perhaps if I sudo to
> root I can run passwd successfully.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich
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Rich,

The root account is disabled 'by-design'.  Jumping into a new 
distribution is the perfect time to break any previous bad habits of 
unnecessarily wielding the root account when you shouldn't be.  Almost 
everything you ever need to accomplish as root can be done with 'sudo'.

If you need a persistent session, you can simulate it with 'sudo -i'.  
If you ignore the warnings and still decide you want the root account 
enabled, perform 'sudo passwd root'.

Best,
-EJ

-- 

ej at ejane.org