su - then password, returns authentication failure

[buccaneere]

Is this a new protocol?

I enter su -, then get the password prompt, and it returns authentication failure.

What's new here?

[hugortega]

Is it a fresh installation?

Many distribution disable the root user by default, so you need to do:

sudo passwd

to write a password for the root user.

Anyway, it's a good idea to use 'sudo' instead of root user directly.

Hugo

[buccaneere]

Is it a fresh installation?

Many distribution disable the root user by default, so you need to do:

sudo passwd

to write a password for the root user.

Anyway, it's a good idea to use 'sudo' instead of root user directly.

Hugo

Thanks!

I've done it this way for years.

chucknb@chucknb-desktop:~$ su -
Password: 
su: Authentication failure
chucknb@chucknb-desktop:~$

Something is new...

[reed9]

Ubuntu disables the root password by default and uses sudo exclusively. The first user created on the system automatically has elevated privileges.

As for whether sudo is somehow more secure than su, there is certainly debate about that.

As mentioned, you are free to set a root password in Ubuntu and use su as well.

Instead of prefacing every command with sudo, you can also log in as root with sudo su

[buccaneere]

I went exec sudo -s

chucknb@chucknb-desktop:~$ exec sudo -s
[sudo] password for chucknb: 
root@chucknb-desktop:~#

This worked.

What happened to

su -

???

[reed9]

su - should work fine - again, you just have to set a root password in Ubuntu to use it.