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Questions tagged [root]

The name of the main administrative user commonly used in *nix based systems.

On many operating systems root is the user that is granted all privileges on a system and thus has access to all files and is allowed to perform any action.

Although the name "root" is commonly used as the system's so called "superuser" in Unix-like systems, other user names may be used depending on the operating system.

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What is the "You have new mail" message in Linux/UNIX?

Sometimes, when I log into a box and 'su' to root, I get a cute little message saying I have mail (thank GOD it's not AOL). Where is this mail? What does it contain? Who/What sent it? How important is it? Is this even actual "mail" in the same…
n0pe
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chown is not changing symbolic link

I'm trying to change the user/group of a symbolic link with the command: $ chown -h myuser:mygroup mysymbolic/ But it's not changing. I'm logged in as root. The current user/group is set to root:root. What went wrong?
rizidoro
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Why is the most powerful user on a Unix/Linux system called “root?”

Somewhat inspired by this other question on the use of the term “Super User”, why the heck is the most powerful user on a Unix/Linux system called root? Why not admin, sysop, base, king or something similar? When I read the term root all I think of…
Giacomo1968
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Does the root account always have UID/GID 0?

On all the Linux systems I've managed, the root account has a GID and UID of 0. Is this guaranteed, or is it possible that the system will give root a different ID?
Tanaki
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Force logout a user

I When I logged into the machine as root and typed who to see which users are logged in, I found somebody else too logged in as root devuser pts/0 2011-11-18 09:55 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) root pts/1 2011-11-18 09:56…
Mithun Sreedharan
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Where did the term "superuser" originate?

Where did the term "superuser" originate? Is it a shortening of "supervisory user", or is it just an indicator of the level of power one such user holds in a system?
VortixDev
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Sudo vs root; any actual differences?

I'm working with a support member for a product, and he insists that I need to be root to install a series of patches, and that sudo won't work; he doesn't provide a reason but seems very firm in his beliefs. Browsing Superuser I can't determine any…
Ranger
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How to check root partition with fsck?

I installed Linux Mint 12 KDE, and I would like to check the root partition for any errors. How do I check the root partition with fsck at boot time?
BlueSky
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Where's .bashrc for root?

I know it's not best practice, but on my dev system I login as root. What's the equivalent of the .bashrc file so I can alias some functions? I've found the /etc/bash.bashrc & /etc/bash.bashrc.local but I'm not sure where to plop my commands.…
mbb
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Can I create an SSH user which can access only certain directory?

I have a Virtual Private Server which I can connect to using SSH with my root account, being able to execute any linux command and access all the disk area, obviously. I would like to create another user account, which would be able to access this…
Frantisek
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How to determine the user and group of a daemon in Ubuntu?

How can I check the user and group for the nginx daemon in Ubuntu? Or what's the syntax to find the user and group for a daemon running in Ubuntu?
Prakash Moturu
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How do I make sudo ask for the root password?

When I run sudo as a normal unprivileged user, it asks for my password, not the root password. That's often convenient, but it reduces the amount of information someone would have to have in order to run commands as root. So how can I make sudo ask…
David Z
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Creating files and directories with a certain owner (user/group) while sudoing

I need to wget something (results in a compressed file in cwd), then I have to extract it, then do some copy/move/modification stuff and perhaps finally execute an script (from the downloaded archive). Now all these task either directly (wget,…
Ashkan Kh. Nazary
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How do I run a launchd command as root

I have the following launchctl command as a .plist file. It's loaded and set to run once a day but, it needs to run as root and I'm not sure how to verify this. Also, this cron job basically CDs into a directory and runs a command. I'm sure…
Emmanuel Mwangi
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removing write permission does not prevent root from writing to the file

I just noticed on my Ubuntu machine (ext3 filesystem) that removing write permissions from a file does not keep root from writing to it. Is this a general rule of UNIX file permissions? Or specific to Ubuntu? Or a misconfiguration on my machine?…
laramichaels
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