Is it just me or ...

[darkrose0510]

Is it just me missing something, or is the Gentoo handbook missing a step telling you to set a root password before booting into a newly installed system?

It didn't even occur to me till I was staring at the login prompt. I just booted into Debian, chrooted into Gentoo and set the password there. But it was a little disconcerting.


Maybe I'm sick, but I'm quite liking twm too.

[Kieren]

You don't get a root user by default. Instead anything you want to do as root is preceded by sudo. For example:

sudo ifconfig

[darkrose0510]

That may be the case, but the handbook says to setup user accounts after first booting into the system...

Which of course you can't setup a user account till you've logged in as root....

Which you can't do as there was no root password set, or any other account to log into.

[Kieren]

I'm not too sure with Gentoo but with Ubuntu you create a user on install and they have root privileges (After you type sudo) and you just use their password

[gruven]

Ummmm....

Gentoo does provide you with a root user, and yes setting the password is in the handbook.

Section 8c.
Gentoo Linux Documentation -- Configuring your System

Ubuntu is the only distro that sets up sudo instead of a root user by default that I know of.

[darkrose0510]

Thanks gruven, figured I'd missed it somewhere, looks like I just skipped too much when I ignored PCMCIA.

[i92guboj]

You don't get a root user by default. Instead anything you want to do as root is preceded by sudo. For example:

sudo ifconfig

First, sudo is not even mentioned in the handbook. At least, not in the basic stuff that you need to read to install Gentoo. Not as far as I can remember, though I haven't used the handbook for anything other than reference purposes on the last years. Unlike in many other linux distros, sudo is not even part of system which is the basic Gentoo package set. In Gentoo you don't get sudo unless you emerge it and set it up yourself.

Second, you can't run a linux system without root, and you can't use sudo without root. Every linux tipical system will setup for you a root user, and ask you to enter a valid password for it when installing.

The only purpose of sudo is automating the whole process, allowing you to run a given program with root ID without needing a password. There's nothing magical behind it, and you still need a root ID.

As for the original topic, as someone already mentioned above, it's perfectly explained in the handbook how to set up the root password before rebooting.

[phulaeo]

This is one of those things that's very easy to overlook... at first because it's just a tiny part of a large process, then again later because you're skipping over things as you learn Gentoo more and more.

The major thing that turned me off about Ubuntu when I tried it out was the way they use sudo; I don't tend to just want to run one command as root.

[i92guboj]

The major thing that turned me off about Ubuntu when I tried it out was the way they use sudo; I don't tend to just want to run one command as root.

Then you probably turned away for the wrong reason, since the fact that sudo is configured by default, doesn't mean that you can't use su just like in any other distro to become root and run as many command as you like on the su'ed shell.

[phulaeo]

Then you probably turned away for the wrong reason, since the fact that sudo is configured by default, doesn't mean that you can't use su just like in any other distro to become root and run as many command as you like on the su'ed shell.

Perhaps. Regardless, I'm glad I went to Gentoo, as I've learned a great deal more using it than I would have Ubuntu.