By default, the root account password is locked in Ubuntu - Canonical neither supports nor advocates enabling the root account. This means that you cannot login as root directly or use the su command to become the root user. However, since the root account physically exists it is still possible to run programs with root-level privileges.

What if you want one user to run a command as an another system user without exchanging passwords. For example, you may want an user john to run a find command or custom bash shell script as an user greg or even as a user root ( superuser ) without password exchange. In this case a sudo utility with its /etc/sudoers configuration file will be your friend.

Enabling the root account in ubuntu is rarely necessary. Almost everything you need to do as root of an Ubuntu system can be done via sudo or gksudo. If you really need a persistent root login, the best alternative is to simulate a root login shell using the following command... It is tested in ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala also.

Sudo which is su “do” allows a system administrator to delegate authority to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands as root or another user while providing an audit trail of the commands and their arguments.sudo allows a permitted user to execute a command as the superuser or another user, as specified in the sudoers file.

This is a guide containing the most popular and useful ways of using the APT and DPKG commands, and it applies to both Ubuntu and Debian (and their derivatives). I mentioned where super user privileges are required, the ones without a mention can be executed as normal user.

A look at various ways to secure the root account against system users and some in-use methods that seem to cause more harm than good.

The two types of user accounts are Administrator and Standard. The user account created during the installation process is, by default, of the Administrator type. That is the superuser. A user with that account can perform any task on the system.

If you are new to Ubuntu and have been using other distros like Fedora or openSUSE before, then you may find it frustrating that when you issue the "su" command it will result to authentication failure.By default, access to root account password is disabled in Ubuntu for added security measures.

User management on Fedora 15 is just as easy as on any other distribution or operating system. And the graphical user management tools (there are two) are very intuitive to use. There are two types of user accounts on Fedora 15 – Standard and Administrator. The Administrator has root or super user privileges. During installation, the user created may be added to the Administrators group.