Guest filthy_mcnasty Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 I would love to use Linux more often but cannot get past the annoyance of permissions. I understand the point. I see why it's good. But this is for a single user home PC, i'm not worried about who's running what on my network and access to a certain folder. (so please spare the "dont give root access to a user blah blah" stuff, i know, i'm not concerned) Lately (I must have screwed something up) it no longer accepts my root password when I try to run the mandrake update do-hickey. I can login as root and do everything I want from there but I would really like to simply have my user account always have root privelages. I logged in as root and went to the users thing and set my name as part of group root, i tried going to the folder properties and setting access from there also and everything but it just doesn't want to cooperate. It worked at one point though so I was wondering if anyone has insight on why it might not be taking the root password anymore for this *even typing su in the console it doesn't take the PW that i KNOW is right anymore* or is there an easy way to give my user root priv? that would be ideal because then i wont have to reinstall mandrake and reconfigure that user. i had finally got everything set up to the point where i felt it could be a replacement for windoze so i'd like to avoid this if possible. any feedback is appreciated. [moved from Software by spinynorman] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
streeter Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 >>I must have screwed something up Probably when running as root... :) Seriously, it goes a little deeper than just who is running what locally - for instance, why do you think viruses and the like can do pretty much what they like on a Windows machine? That's right - the process they are running under (web browser, email client, instant messenger...) has 'root' privileges... Once everything is set up, you rarely have to go to root anyway (unless you are a 'fiddler' - like most of us here, I dare say!!) plus, you soon get used to it anyway - takes about 2 seconds. Still, your choice - it's a free world. Mostly. Bit strange not being able to su to root though. Unless anybody has a better idea, try logging in as root and change your password - even if you don't actually change it, if you see what I mean.. To do this, type passwd at the command line and follow the prompts. This may update something, I dont know... Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 Does it actually give you an error when you "su" or just "su: incorrect password" ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest filthy_mcnasty Posted June 27, 2004 Report Share Posted June 27, 2004 streeter i appreciate your....looking out for me =) i guess you could say.... yes i'm aware of how viruses work and why it's "bad" to do what I want to do but yeah i'm just messing around w/ linux right now anyways trying to learn it better (to piss the brass off really) anyways, yeah i logged in as root and changed my password and it "worked" in the sense that to login as root i have to use that new password. however the same problem with "su" or mandrake update still exists. i tried 'changing' it to the same thing and even tried simply making it "a" but neither worked. and cybrjackie it simply says "su: incorrect password" perhaps in the process of trying to give my user account root privelages it changed the root password for this user somehow? (i'm kinda making this up obviously cuz i have no idea why it wont work, and as a programmer i'm laughing at myself for saying something like this) the change is obviously not visible to the logged in user somehow or bleh.......... i might just reinstall and reconfig it all Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
armondf Posted June 27, 2004 Report Share Posted June 27, 2004 Ello try taking the user *out* of the root group and reassigning to the, well, *users* group. Regards, Armond Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
streeter Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 Have you tried "su root"? Don't know if this will help though... Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramfree17 Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 try booting into single mode and changing the system's root password again. in lilo just press escape, and then type 'linux single' (or was it 'linux 1')? ciao! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted June 30, 2004 Report Share Posted June 30, 2004 chances are you somehow got yourself removed from the "wheel" group. get to root, and do: usermod -G wheel [username] where you would replace [username] with your username (no brackets). You will need to logout/in for these settings to take effect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idud Posted July 1, 2004 Report Share Posted July 1, 2004 Hmm let me join this topic. But I can't talk anything about your problem with root-privileged user, since, if you really wanted that you could simply using root from start. About su thing, I experienced this problem sometimes ago, and finally found out what the problem is. Try to do this command ls -al /bin/su* and if it gives you something like this -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 95564 Peb 19 2003 /bin/su I think this is exactly your problem. Executing this command chmod 4755 /bin/su by root user should fix your problem, and will give you something like this -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 95564 Peb 19 2003 /bin/su I hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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