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Quite a while back i'd worked briefly on Red Hat, and it had this option of booting into root directly, and not using the su command to change your access. I know that by default the root account is disabled in Ubuntu and for all practical purposes is as good as non existent, but still suppose it is unlocked, can we log into root directly?

Ideas?

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  • It is possible to log in as root but not recommended and never neccessary. See these questions Creating exact root user in Ubuntu 12.04 and How to enable root login? May 13, 2013 at 18:57
  • See also answers to this question: Why is it bad to run as root?
    – Takkat
    May 13, 2013 at 19:04
  • @Warren, thank you for those links, but, what i'm asking is that whether or not there is an option which would allow me to boot my ubuntu machine as the root user, ie, as soon as the machine starts and i open the terminal, it's in the 'root@computer-name' format.
    – Projjol
    May 13, 2013 at 19:12
  • @Takkat, i've seen that link earlier, and i never do use the root account, unless it is absolutely necessary (which it hardly is), my question was to see whether or not this option is there, the security implications and vulnerabilities that it poses, i've read on from the same page.
    – Projjol
    May 13, 2013 at 19:16
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1 Answer 1

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The root account is not disabled, it is locked.

The preferred method is to use sudo, specifically sudo -i

See: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

You can run graphical applications with gksu, it needs to be installed on 13.04

sudo apt-get install gksu

You can always boot to a root shell by booting to recovery mode and dropping to a root shell.

You can ssh in as root using keys or by setting a password.

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  • Is there nothing similar to the recovery mode root shell option in the regular system? ie, can i start my machine as the root user and not as the default user then change to the root user?
    – Projjol
    May 13, 2013 at 19:14
  • No, Ubuntu strongly discourages logging in a root and with sudo -i it really does not matter. sorry to say, but your method is "old school" and supported less and less, sudo is used more and more.
    – Panther
    May 13, 2013 at 20:16
  • ok, i was just asking to see whether or not it there, thanks.
    – Projjol
    May 14, 2013 at 7:15

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