Switched On Tech Design

Tag: root

Ubuntu Server: How to change to the root user

Some guides tell you to enter “su” on Unix systems to get superuser permissions; in Ubuntu, however, this won’t work. As a user with sudo permissions (the user created on install has these) enter the following instead:

sudo su

Enter your account password and voila, you are logged in as root. You can tell when you are logged in as root as your prompt will look like:

root@luna:/home/#

rather than:

tma1@luna:/home$

Note the # rather than the $? This indicates that you’re performing actions as the root user. This can be dangerous as you will be able to do things which can wreck your system irreparably, so be careful! To go back to working as your usual user, type:

exit

or hit CTRL+D.

April 10, 2013
MySQL: How to log in

If you’re unfamiliar with MySQL you may be following a guide which instructs you to log in as root without actually telling you how; use the following:

mysql -u root -p

This logs you in as the root user (-u signifying which user you want to log in as) and -p signifies that you are logging in with a password, which you will be prompted for after you enter the command. The MySQL root password is set when you install MySQL server.

April 2, 2013
MySQL: Changing the root user’s password

If you need to change the MySQL root user’s password use the following from a command prompt:

mysqladmin -u root -p password NEWPASSWORD

Enter the current root password when prompted and replace NEWPASSWORD with the desired password. This should return you to the command prompt, and you can test whether it was successful by logging in:

mysql -u root -p

January 9, 2013