Install issue: get root login in GUI

[Jerry McAllister]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 05:51:51PM +0200, Roland Smith wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 04:22:42PM +0200, Christian Walther wrote:
> >  On 18/06/07, Harriet Severino <severino42 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I am having install isues and can not login as root in the GUI. I have
> > > to re-boot and come up in single user mode to work as root. Then when I
> > > need to look something up, I have to boot into regular mode, look it up
> > > on the web, then re-boot into single user mode. This is cumbersome to
> > > say the least. I need to install the jdk, and keep rebooting to check
> > > the doc!
> > 
> >  By default root is not allowed to login to the GUI. So far, this is
> >  "works as designed".
> >  There are two options:
> >  1. Switch to a console by pressing Ctrl+Alt+1 vor example. This will
> >  give you a console login that doesn't reject root. Do the things you
> >  want to do as root there.
> >  2. Add yourself to the group "wheel". This will allow you to login *as
> >  a normal user*, open a terminal and do a "su -". Enter the root
> >  password, and you're done. To do this you probably need to use a
> >  console login and edit /etc/group apropriately. :-)
> 
> It's better to use pw(8). to do user and group management. In this case 
> 'pw groupmod wheel -m <yourname>' would do the trick. 
> 
> Although you can edit /etc/group, you should not edit /etc/passwd,
> because it should be generated from /etc/master.passwd. Therefore it's
> best to get used to using pw(8). It will also help generate valid group
> and passwd syntax.

Sort of.   Actually, you should use vipw(8) to edit /etc/passwd.
It will take care of updating master.passwd and the database.

But, using pw is OK too.

////jerry

> 
> Roland
> -- 
> R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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