Re: Admin Root user [not set to default]
On Wed, 9 Apr 2025 at 12:05, Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 09, 2025 at 10:50:54 +0100, James Freer wrote:
> > I've just done my install of Debian 12 Live XFCE version.
>
> I really don't understand why so many people do this. Why would you
> install using a "Live" medium instead of the real installer? [a]
>
> Anyway, the Live version doesn't set a root password, and doesn't
> give you the chance to set one during installation. [b] It just assumes
> you will want to use sudo for everything. But don't worry about that --
> once you boot into the installed system, you can do whatever you want
> to it, including setting a root password.
>
> Just become root via sudo, and then run "passwd root". So, either of
> these:
>
> sudo passwd root
>
> sudo -i
> passwd root
>
> The second one may be more convenient if you want to run several
> commands as root instead of just one. E.g. you might want to install
> a whole bunch of packages using apt or apt-get, and already being in
> a root shell will make that slightly more convenient.
>
Henrik and Joe thanks for your replies. I will explore further when i
get back home.
Greg raised a couple of points that i'd like to reply to:
a] I used Ubuntu to start with back in 2008 when i nursed my mother
with Alzheimers. I went into the town bookshop and saw two books on
Ubuntu, bought them and was able to get started on Linux. 'Live
medium' is what i started with. It makes sense i think to look at the
distro to check it'll work e.g with one's graphics card. I have tried
one or two distros that didn't work in the past. So stayed with ubuntu
or rather the slightly more lightweight xubuntu. Some distros like
Debian at the time have had a system install disk - i think there are
two approaches for a user to choose. Either way one cannot always be
sure the new install will work on one's PC.
b] 'Sudo' - i thought came in with ubuntu (and some other
derivatives). Many distros use 'su -' for admin rights and i thought
Debian was one of those. Sudo i thought was introduced as a level of
safety for newbie users so they could only carry out one operation at
a time. If i wanted to do a series of operations i'd choose 'sudo su'
which allowed that and as i understood was the equivalent to 'su -'.
>From what you have said it seems Debian has now included sudo. It may
be that the Calamares installer has decided this setup and it is
better to use the netinst iso.
Thanks for the help and i will explore when i get back home in a couple of days.
james
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