Can’t login to root

[toastrack]

Trying to access smbpasswd file to debug networking, I need root to be able to edit that file.

But my system doesn’t seem to give me the option of booting up in root. How do I make it do this ??

BTw, sometimes recently it’s been asking for the root password before it will boot up normally, which seems strange.

System is Suse 10.2, latest updates present.

I need to sort this before I can move on to get the network working again.

[Kernel_Killer]

Log in, and use ‘sudo -s’ to give you a root shell, but with your account password. Also, you can give yourself permission by using ‘su’.

Did you have to set a root password when you setup the account? A lot of GUI login managers will disallow root access, but you can change it to allow it. In KDE there is a whole section for the login manager, and enable it to allow root. Of course, it’s not a good practice to log into X as root at all.

If you did set a root password, you can run the GUI tool with the ‘kdesu’ command, and it will authenticate before it starts it.

[toastrack]

Thanks . I understand some of this.

I did have to set a root password when I installed Suse. I take your comment that it’s better to open a new shell for root than to log in from the start as root.

Now the simple question:- having got the root shell open and running, what is the command I need to text-edit a file such as smbpasswd please ?

A related question – can I find an individual file and reload it from the installation discs? If so, what is the procedure ?

[Kernel_Killer]

Finding that file would be an extreme pain. As for editing the smbpasswd, you don’t really have to edit it with an editor. You can use the smbpasswd command to accomplish this.

As root:

$ smbpasswd -a user1 # add "user1" to the smbpasswd file
$ smbpasswd -e user1 # enable the "user1" account
$ smbpasswd -x user1 # delete "user1" from the smbpasswd file

You can find more options, just by typing ‘smbpasswd’ in the terminal, without adding anything else.

[okieman46]

You can also use the command man smbpasswd for more info as well