Giving a User Account Administrative Privilages

[kazper]

Hi

I'm very new to Mandriva, having just installed Mandrake 10.0 Official.

I'm using GNOME and would like to know how to assign my user account admin privilages.

Is there a simple way of doing this like you can on a NT server.

[retired1af]

Bad idea. Yes you can assign your user to "root", but is not recommended.

[budman7]

I am sure there is a way to do it. But, why would you want to do that?

If your normal user needs root privileges, just open a console and type "su" and enter your root password.
Or just attempt to do something that requires root access, and hopefully it should brung up a box asking youfor your root password.

Giving a normal user root priviliges is just a bad idea.
IMO, being required to take that extra step makes you really think about what you are going to change.

This is also one of the things that makes Linux so much better than that other OS. Linux users don't have the convenience of wrecking their system without putting in a password.

[springshades]

In KDE you can "keep" the root password once you use it which might make things easier. I don't think that GNOME has that option. A lot of things will simply ask you for your password when you use them, like the Mandrake Control Center. However, if you need to delete or edit something that you don't have priviledges to it's a bit more annoying. The best way is to open a terminal, type su, put in the root password, then start programs from there. Any program you start in the terminal that is running as root will have root priviledges. If you want to delete something, type konqueror, then you can navigate there and delete it. If you want to edit a file (usually the thing you want to do), type kwrite or nedit or something like that and you can open up a file that you wouldnt normally have access to. If you're looking for what exactly to type in to start a program you use, you can find out by right clicking on the icon in the applications menu.

[kazper]

for the advice will use su or use root from terminal.

[aioshin]

try the sudo utility, it can let you assign some root priviledges to a certain account on a certain service or appication, im just not familiar with the syntax that should be used, but this is good so you may not give all the previledges of a root account... well, you have to try google about SUDO

[Cabhan]

Also, for the record, last I checked, GNOME also lets you keep the root password saved once you enter it. It can also be cancelled at will from the icon in the system tray...

And as a safety issue, you really shouldn't even boot in as root. Simply log in as your regular user, su when you have to, and immediately switch back. Especially if you're a new user, using root for non-root tasks can be dangerous at times.