Re: Root login to Windows X
Francisco Castellon <castf@shaw.ca> writes:
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(Plain-text mail only, please!)
> I just finished installing my first Debian system and I seem to not be
> able to log on to Windows X using the root account, I can easily log in
> with any other account though.
...oh, so you're set: you can just use su or sudo to become root.
> I am trying to do some administrative tasks but I want to do them
> through the desktop since they are far simpler that way.
Like what, specifically? Most of the things I actually want root for
involve either (a) manipulating installed packages [dpkg, aptitude],
(b) adding users [adduser], or (c) changing individual file
permissions [chown, chmod, &c.]; none of these really have good GUI
equivalents.
In general you want to do the least possible with the root account.
Imagine, for example, that somewhere hidden deep within one of the
GNOME libraries is some code that might randomly scribble over
/dev/hda. If you're logged in as a mortal user, your program dies
with an obscure "permission denied" error, which is odd, but no damage
done. If you're logged in as root, the safety checks go away, and
your hard drive gets scribbled over because of someone else's bug.
Doing everything-but-what-you-need-to as a normal user also minimizes
(but doesn't eliminate) the damage you can do by typing 'rm * ~' with
one more space than you really intended, among other things.
> Is there a way that I can get to the desktop with the root account?
That having been said, if you *really* want to, there's generally a
frob in your display manager configuration that lets you change it.
In the particular case of gdm, there's an 'AllowRoot' setting in
/etc/gdm/gdm.conf you can change; I don't know about other display
managers.
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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