HOWTO: Become the Root User
Sometimes my referred search strings from Google show me some interesting things. In today’s case, there were some hits for this subject, so I thought I’d address it.
The all powerful, can-do-anything user on a GNU/Linux system is called the superuser. The superuser’s username is root. Therefore, for most conversations, these two names are interchangeable.
To become root in a terminal window, type:
su
you will be prompted for your superuser password. Enter it and your prompt will become root@yourdomain.
To do it in KDE (if anyone knows how to do this in Gnome, please post a comment as I don’t forsee myself using Gnome anytime in the near future) is a little different. You could log off of KDE and then log back in as root, but that’s a little cumbersome. If you just want to quickly run a program from the desktop as root:
- Press ALT + F2 to bring up the KDE run box
- Type in the command you’d like to run
- Click the Options button
- Select ‘run as another user’
- Enter root in the username box and root’s password in the password box
- Click OK
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POSTED IN: How To
2 opinions for HOWTO: Become the Root User
geoff
Oct 28, 2005 at 8:32 am
In Gnome:
Applications -> System Tools -> Run as different user
Jon
Oct 28, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Wicked. Thanks!
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