On 02-Aug-05 Alec Melling wrote:
Hi,
I have done it. Using qtparted I have managed to re-format my
drive to ext3.
There is of course a problem. I am using Kubuntu which as you
may or may not know does not have a root account. You use sudo or
kdesu to get things done.
Having used kdesu qtparted to reformat the drive, I now find the
drive is owned by root as in root group.
Question: How do I change the ownership of the drive?
Chmod does not seem to have commands to do this, not that I understand
the syntax anyway. So is there a file I can edit?
--
Alec Melling
+44 (0)114 2343612
<alec [at] amelling>co.uk>
Regardless of the outcome of Alec's saga (and I do hope it works out!)
I find myself very surprised at Ubuntu for not having a root account!
I'd been thinking of giving Ubuntu a whirl, having heard good things
of it, but I can't imagine running any unixoid system which doesn't
have root. I don't see that sudo (pseudo?) solves it. The presence
of "root" is deeply embedded in the design of Unix, therefore also
Linux, and there must be vast arrays of programs that directly
or indirectly depend on the assumption that root exists.
Alec's experience that after using kdesu he finds that the drive
has been assigned to a non-existent root is an example of what
I mean.
I'm also very puzzled as to how it would work.
Who owns "/", for instance?
Who's in charge of all those daemons?
In a normal Linux, have a look at /etc/passwd and you'll see various
"users" like "sync", "shutdown", "halt", "operator" as well as "root"
in the root group, but fundamentally root rules all. And I think it
is needed.
If I had doen a trial installation of Ubuntu, and discovered that
there was no root, I think the first thing I'd have done would be
to create a real root: Edit /etc/passwd (and one or two other files)
to create a root entry, log in as "root" and set a password, create
the root home directory /root, set up a root login profile, and then
carry on as normal.
And I'm also very puzzled as to why Ubuntu (or any other distribution)
should think it's a good idea to have no root. What is gained? Surely
what is lost has to be made good by some complicated tangle of
work-arounds, with the risk of setting up various Catch-22s within
this tangle.
Is it perhaps the idea that vapourising root will make Ubuntu more
"friendly" to folk like Windows users whose minds don't quite grasp
the idea of a privileged user? (Mind you, if that's the objective,
then the simple solution is to have just one user, root, though
you can call it something else, e.g. "alec", if you like!).
Any comments?
Best wishes to all,
Ted.
As I have said all along