CentOS bootloader and sudo

[brittonal]

Hey everyone. I'm a very new user to Linux but I'm trying to learn. I installed CentOS on my Lenovo T420 and now I'm thinking it might not be a good idea as there is a lot of proprietary software that runs my thinkvantage key and my function keys.

Anyways, just to do some basic things, I noticed that bootloader shows CentOS and my windows 7 installation which is labeled "Other". I want to make the booatloader auto load windows 7 first and I want it to say Windows 7 and not Other.

I typed "sudo /boot/grub/menu.lst" I think it was to get to the file as I read 0,1,2...etc changes the boot order. Well, it says that my user name is not in the sudo list or something of that nature. How do I add myself to do sudo commands?

After I can add myself to sudo, change the bootloader order and description, I'll be back to ask a ton more questions.

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome.
I do not think CentOS uses sudo by default. Try just using the su - command or gksu

su -

enter password and notice they do not echo on screen but just keep typing and hit enter when done. Also notice the hyphen -, it's important if you want full root priviledges and paths.
or

gksu

You can also use su -c to issue one or more commands and exit back to the normal user

su -c "some command"

(password)
For more info on su - and gksu
gnome-sudo - What is gnome-sudo
su (Unix) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

EDIT:
For info on changing GRUB options, see this link.
9.7.*GRUB Menu Configuration File

[MikeTbob]

I just thought of something else but I'm not sure if CentOS does this for you or not. Normally, new users may only su - to root if they belong to the wheel group. To add a username to the wheel group, issue the following command as root:

gpasswd -a username wheel

Of course you need to substitute your real username in the above command.

[brittonal]

Can you explain what wheel is? I guess I forgot to mention that everything must be explained as I'm extremely new to this.

[jayd512]

Hi there.

Basically, the 'wheel' group is a group which limits the number of people who are able to su to root.
Nothing more than that.
Some distros have wheel preconfigured, while others do not.

[brittonal]

Ok, I tried all the commands listed and nothing worked. Anything else to try?

"su -c" gives me an incorrect password though its right.
"gksu" gives me a command not found
"sudo" gives me "username" is not in the sudoers file

I did add myself to wheel but it was "usermod -G wheel <username>" that I had to use

[brittonal]

I tried to just use su and I logged in with the roots password and it works. Now I'm having another problem. When I navgiate to /boot/grub/menu.lst it tells me permission denied.

[yancek]

CentOS is designed to be used as a server so if you are not planning to use it as such, you may be better off trying another distribution. You can go to the distrowatch site which has a lot of information on Linux distributions with links to their sites where you can get more information.

If you use su, enter your password and "it works", how do you then get permission denied. Are you opening a text editor from the terminal? That's what you would need to do. I don't use CentOS so I'm not sure which text editors it uses. You might try in a terminal gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf to see if that opens the grub.conf file. I believe the menu.lst file is just a link to grub.conf.

[brittonal]

Yancek, that worked. Thank you. I wasn't using gedit which I assume is a linux file or word editor like notepad from windows. I'm a super noobie at this as you can see. Your right, maybe I shouldn't be using CentOS. I knew it was mainly for servers but the installation has a desktop installation so I tried that.

Now lets edit this file and see what I come up with.

[jayd512]

I tried to just use su and I logged in with the roots password and it works. Now I'm having another problem. When I navgiate to /boot/grub/menu.lst it tells me permission denied.

Here's a little something for you... using su will log you into the root account, but you won't have complete and full permissions.
However, if you use su - (notice the dash) you'll have full access to everything.