[NCLUG] root/superuser pwd question

[Brian Wood]

Mark McCulley wrote:
> I am working on converting my old Toshiba laptop to a Linux box, and
> installed a dual-boot of Debian (Hardy Heron).  It's telling me, on booting
> up Linux, that there are updates, and when I try to install them, I get a
> message that says
> "E:dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to
> correct the problem."
> 
> When I open a terminal window and enter that string, it says I need
> super-user rights.  However, I don't recall the dual-boot install asking me
> to create a root user/password, and I don't have a record of the pwd.
> (Maybe I did but was interrupted at a crucial point...)  Have tried logging
> in as root with a few tries at a pwd but to no avail.
> 
> Is there a way to recover the pwd?
> Or can I re-install over the original installation (only did it last week,
> so not a lot of changes since then) and start over?
>

Hardy Heron is Ubuntu, not Debian.

The Ubuntu developers/packagers believe that we are all too stupid to be
root.

You can do things their way, using sudo, or just:

sudo passwd root

Enter your user password first, then the new root password twice, when
prompted.

Now you are smart enough to be root :-)

beww