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I have created my customized live CD by following the instructions @ Ubuntu Forum Thread 688872

The Live CD gets created fine and it is able to bootup as well. I see my customized setting in place.

I created the Live CD using Ubuntu 10.04 Server edition.

My issue is, when the system boots up with the live CD, it logs in automatically as "ubuntu" user. I want the system to login as "root". Because I will be running quite a few perl automation script off of the live CD and I need to have root privileges.

Now, i know the "sudo" way of doing it, But I am least bothered about the security aspect and want my system to switch to "root" user the moment it boots up.

Is there a hack to achieve the same?

UPDATE: If you cant resist to down vote my question, then please free to do so but do me a favor and let me know why you are down voting by dropping a comment.

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  • I strongly advice to find an alternate method for deploying your perl scripts. You do know that you can add post-install scripts to your live cd? (kickstart I think it is called). – Rinzwind Oct 11 '12 at 11:38
  • No, these are not post install scripts, I will running the SPECcpu test in fully automated way. these test and their iteration take 2-3 days to complete. This is a very big chunk of automation and could not be a part of "post kickstart stuff. Thanks for your time. – slayedbylucifer Oct 11 '12 at 13:51
  • also, what's up with the down vote, what is wrong with the question, I really feeling that stackexchange should make comments mandatory while down voting someone's questions... – slayedbylucifer Oct 11 '12 at 13:52
  • Ach @dheeraj someone will come along and upvote. I see a tendency for increased downvotes when someone asks to do anything about sudo/root. Don't bother with it since we can't stop it ;) – Rinzwind Oct 11 '12 at 18:16
  • Would it be an option to put those scripts in cron? Or to make the user ubuntu a sudo account with no password just for the time to run these scripts? I looked around for about an hour but gave up on setting the custom live cd to use root. It looks to much of a hassle. Setting things up post-install is probably easier. – Rinzwind Oct 11 '12 at 18:19
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The live CD will forget everything you did during your session, so I'd recommend booting from a USB key with a persistent session. Root has no password in live session, so in the CLI, if you do sudo su, it'll just go to root, and not ask for a password. You could easily make a bash script to go to root and then run your perl scripts.

By default root will timeout after 15 minutes, but you can change that, see this page.

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  • yeah, USB is not an option as i will be mounting my ISO via Light out console of the server programatically. Thanks for your time and the hint regarding how to increase root timeout. – slayedbylucifer Oct 11 '12 at 15:24
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Hmm... not sure if this exactly relates, but as I described in How is ubuntu live user graphical session (startx) started up in a LiveCD? - if I start with a Mini remix (which ends with text/console login for the live user ubuntu); and then I configure startup of X (or the desktop environment) through /etc/rc.local - then the desktop environment is seemingly started under the root user. Unfortunately, I do not know how to switch to the root user already at login, so that the text mode console starts up as root as well...

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