[colug-432] Change Root Password

[Thomas Cranston]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 11:15 AM, Rick Hornsby <richardjhornsby at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Dec 19, 2012, at 10:52, Rob Funk <rfunk at funknet.net> wrote:
>
> > On Wednesday, December 19, 2012 10:39:49 AM Rick Hornsby wrote:
> >> Side note: basically, never log in as root.
> >
> > Agreed.
> >
> >> Unless the system is so
> >> borked there is no other way to get in. Log in as yourself, and use sudo
> >> to execute administrative tasks that require root privs.  In some rare
> >> cases, switching to root for a few minutes is easier -
> >>
> >> $ sudo su - root
> >
> > Easier: sudo su -
> > (root is the default.)
>
> indeed. Typed it out in the explicit form w/o thinking.
>
> > OR
> > sudo -i
> >
> > Or, if you want something closer to your usual environment, but as root:
> > sudo su
> > OR even better:
> > sudo -s
>
> If you do this, maybe modify your own path first to include /sbin and
> /usr/sbin. No distro I've worked in has ever included the sbin directories
> in the user path by default.
>
> I sometimes add them out of principle anyways. There are a few things in
> there that a non priv user might run (ping? or did that get moved to /bin?)
>

Running Mint 14.1 The root password by default is the same as whoever
installed. During setup, I used a totally unacceptable PW even by my
standards.

tom at tom-Inspiron-1520-mint ~ $ passwd
Changing password for tom.
(current) UNIX password:
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
passwd: password unchanged

tom at tom-Inspiron-1520-mint ~ $ sudo passwd
[sudo] password for tom:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
tom at tom-Inspiron-1520-mint ~ $

tom at tom-Inspiron-1520-mint ~ $ sudo su root
[sudo] password for tom:

#tried the new password

Sorry, try again.

[sudo] password for tom: # tried original password

tom-Inspiron-1520-mint tom #

I want to be able to change the password that I login with after I startup
my laptop.




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