Raspberry Pi Forums

Hi,

Getting slightly frustrated with myself now as I don't know how to handle this situation.

I cant use applications like Aptitude for example that require you to "be root" as it asks for a password but I have no idea what the root password is

Does "root" even exist with the pre packaged raspberry pi images? (I'm using Debian)

What's the solution to this? Personally I wish a user account wasn't pre configured with any of the images. Why cant it require a standard root and user set-up on first boot.

Someone make me look stupid please and tell me what's going on here!

Cheers.

edit: it also confuses me  that I can get past this issue by using aptitude from a terminal and prefacing the command with sudo so "sudo apt-get install" etc..  that works fine! Uh?! Still, I want to know how to get around the original issue

To create a root account, use the command

sudo passwd root

and enter a password of your choice.

However, it is VERY bad practice to use a root account. This is why sudo exists.

If you want a halfway house, you can use the command

sudo -i

to grant you root privileges until you enter the command

exit

Be careful when behaving as root.

Hurrah! That was easy then, Doh!

I understand I shouldn't ever really be using root but when using these package managers etc they seem to require you to be using them as root. This is why I wanted to know!

Thanks Bredman.