This is a question from a rookie just trying to understand how and why things work like they do. Why do I have to use sudo everytime? The second use of sudo in a term session doesn't require a password so it knows I have access to root so why can't I just type 'mkdir directory' without sudo?
2104
I've often come across posts on forums or other websites where you see people joking in such a manner about running/logging in as root as if it's something awful and everyone ought to know about it. However, there isn't much that a search reveals on the matter.   It may be widely known to Linux experts, but I really don't know why. I remember always running as root when I first tried Linux years ago (Redhat and Mandrake) and don't remember running into any problems because of that.   There are actually some distros that have a bright red background with alert signs all over it as wallpaper for the root user (SuSe?). I still use the "Administrator" account for regular use on my Windows installation and haven't ever run into any problems there either.
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So far I have found four different ways to add a user to the sudoers group and not all methods work in all systems.  Why so many different implementations? What is the best? What is the standard (i.e. work in most systems)?  Different implementations:   Adding the user to the 'wheel' group.  Adding the user to the 'sudo' group.  Editing the file /etc/sudoers Editing the file /etc/sudoers using visudo
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I just powerwashed (that's a factory reset on chromebooks) my computer so that it would be be 'brand new,' however now I don't have sudo access anymore. I used to not need a password to use sudo, however now a password is required and I have no idea what it is. I tried my login password, however that didn't work. Any advice?
41141
I messed around with the sudoers file without really knowing what I was doing using   Assume I did everything that was in the top answer along with editing it with vim and not visudo. How do I fix this?  I'm running Xubuntu 12.04, and I didn't set a root password.
119517
Whenever I issue command sudo apt-get install ** it does not ask for password, not in my admin user too.  How to make it prompt for password?  My sudoer :  ubuntu:~$ sudo cat /etc/sudoers # # This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root. # # Please consider adding local content in /etc/sudoers.d/ instead of # directly modifying this file. # # See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file. # Defaults    env_reset Defaults    secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"  # Host alias specification  # User alias specification  # Cmnd alias specification  # User privilege specification root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL  # Members of the admin group may gain root privileges %admin ALL=(ALL) ALL  # Allow members of group sudo to execute any command %sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL  # See sudoers(5) for more information on "#include" directives:  #includedir /etc/sudoers.d ALL ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
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For whatever reason, we do no longer need to be root (or using sudo) to run /sbin/shutdown, /sbin/reboot etc.  This seems to be because those executables are now symlinks to /bin/systemctl which handles everything as normal user.  However, what if I want shutdown and reboot to require root authentication again? How can I achieve this?
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I accidentally used  sudo chmod 3 /   which gives a execute and write permission to the root directory, while deleting the read permission. How can I recover from this, I cannot even use sudo now.
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I wanted to change my own password (as an admin) so I did the following command:  sudo passwd   and then it prompted for a password but when I tryed to relog, my password was not changed. I'm now wondering what password did I changed since it did prompted me to enter a password but I'm not sure what password did it changed exactly.  I know that if I do sudo passwd &lt;MY_USER&gt; it works, I'm just wondering without a user what happens.  Thank you
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I accidentally executed      sudo chmod -R 777 /   I was actually trying to change a specific folder permission recursively, btw i did stop the command before it changed everything.  But now, i can't execute for example      sudo   Every time i try to sudo something it throws me this error:     effective uid is not 0, is sudo installed setuid root?   Btw i know i can use chown -R root:root /usr/bin where sudo is located, but of course i don't have the permissions to do this.  So, how can i revert this process? Or at least save the sudo file without reinstalling everything?  The system is still connected to the internet and seems to work fine besides the sudo issue.  Thanks in advance.
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How can I give a user one password for normal usage when logging in, and another password for system administration and sudo access? I want one user to have two passwords.
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On busy days, I'd like to run   $ ./configure &amp;&amp; make &amp;&amp; sudo make install &amp;&amp; halt   on the night and go to bed, hoping the application would automatically be installed. But what I see the next day is the screen where sudo asks me for the password. So how could I run sudo with password in one command line, or is there any other method to do this?
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Is there any difference between using sudo and using su -c? There are situations where one should be used but not the other?  I was previously using Ubuntu where sudo appears to be ubiquitous but now I'm giving Fedora 15 a try and the idiom su -c appears frequently when I'm trying to learn how to do a few things, although I still see sudo being used now and then.
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I notice a weird (well, according to me) thing about passwords. For example, if I type an incorrect password during login, there will be a few seconds' delay before the system tells me so. When I try to sudo with a wrong password I would also have to wait before the shell says "Sorry, try again".  I wonder why it takes so long to "recognize" an incorrect password? This has been seen on several distributions I use (and even OSX), so I think it's not a distribution specific thing.
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When installing Ubuntu I can create a user with an encrypted folder, what I always do. Now after the installation the login password for this user is also the sudo password. Is that how it should be? I actually would like to have a different user login and sudo password, does is make sense? Should I do that, how?
69062
I would like to run fastboot command without sudo. it's working if I put sudo in front of it, otherwise it wont.  like this:  $ sudo fastboot devices 2738006a    fastboot  $ fastboot devices no permissions  fastboot   How do I solve this?
2993
I want to stop having to use sudo everytime I work in /var/www. How can I do that? I simply want to put all of my sites into this directory and work with them without too much pain.
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Whenever I open the terminal,   To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo &lt;command&gt;".   See "man sudo_root" for details.   appears before the terminal. How do I get that to go away?