Geting Privilage

[Instant]

Im tring to modify menu.lst but it wont let me coz I dont have privilage...
what can I do to get privilage?
I tried signing in as "su" or "root" but I dont know the passwords?????????
what r the passwords??

[techieMoe]

Im tring to modify menu.lst but it wont let me coz I dont have privilage...
what can I do to get privilage?
I tried signing in as "su" or "root" but I dont know the passwords?????????
what r the passwords??

What distribution are you running? You should have had an opportunity to set the root password during your install.

[Cabhan]

What distro are you using?

Essentially, you need to have root permissions to modify this file. Either you need to login as root or obtain them a different way.

The most popular way to obtain root privileges is using the 'su' command. This stands for switch user, and by default will make you into root. This requires that you know the root password. Some distros have this disabled for security reasons.

The other way is called sudo, which is supposedly more secure. Ubuntu and some other distros use this by default. sudo grants some root privileges to a non-root user, which means that you can do administrative tasks without needing to know the root password. To use sudo, you prefix your command with it:

sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.conf

You will be asked for a password, but this time it is your USER password, and not the root one.

[Instant]

Kubuntu 7
They asked for a username and a password during the installation
I assumed its not the root ....
and I am using it all the time....
1) is it the root? >> I have to create another user then right

[oz]

Ubuntu and Kubuntu use sudo and they have disabled the root account by default. Use sudo with the command you want to issue along with your user password:

sudo commandname

Enter user password when it's requested...

[Instant]

why
sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
not
sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

???

[devils casper]

why
sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
not
sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

its sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst only.

Fedora/RH/Gentoo uses grub.conf and all Debian based distros uses menu.lst file only.

if you are using kubuntu, execute any of these commands.

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

OR

kdesu kate /boot/grub/menu.lst