How to I find the root login and password. I am new to linux and openSUSE 12.3.
tried “su” login from terminal command prompt and my login from my installation, which was rejected. “root” for login was recognized.
Thanks,
On 2013-04-21 00:26, ry2dssrt wrote:
>
> How to I find the root login and password. I am new to linux and
> openSUSE 12.3.
Well, install it again and this time write down the password 
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
Hi ry2dssrt,
root is the user name of the “Administrator”. The OS installer will ask you to enter a root-password.
In case you have forgotten that password, you may be in trouble. I don’t know of any way to retrieve it.
su is a command used in a terminal to become root - which means you have to be logged in as some user.
You should have been asked to set up a user, too. As far as I understood you have?
Your user name + password should enable you to log in, either in text or graphic mode.
If you are not sure which user you are, you may enter
whoami
in a console or terminal. It is not recommended to work as root unless root permissions are required.
cu
kasi
robin_listas On 2013-04-21 00:26, ry2dssrt wrote:
>
> How to I find the root login and password. I am new to linux and
> openSUSE 12.3.
Well, install it again and this time write down the password
Well, that was the trouble I meant.
…typing too slowly, …
On 4/20/2013 6:06 PM, kasi042 wrote:
>
> Hi ry2dssrt,
>
> -root- is the user name of the “Administrator”. The OS installer will
> ask you to enter a root-password.
<snip>
In a default install, root’s password is the same as that of the user you create in the installation. There is a box to uncheck
if you desire a separate password for root.
–
P.V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you” Red Green
Do you run 12.3 from a live CD / live DVD ?
hmmm, new to linux …
Hi, I think you are really all new to linux. Bear in mind that for all what you search, there are generally answers already widely and easily available on the web. You will find always (also on this and other forums) people that appear patronizing and tell you “why didn’t you google” or “man”, “manpages” or even “RTFM”. Not all of them are negative but some are merely frustrated that the same questions come over and over again.
On the other side, who begins is washed away with a terabyte of new info, so telling people to read the man pages is like telling them to begin of page one of the bible to find the info somewhere between page 300 and 600, while sometimes you need to read the first 100 pages and understand them in order to merely use the book.
Now to try to make you life easier:
The Linux system is given by the local user (that is “you” as you login, whether you named yourself “neo” or “roger-rabbit”). This is the user you should always work in, especially(!) when you are working on your desktop. The rational for this advice is that you can do much less damage as user, if ever you may devastate your user account, but you (in general) should not be able to do system-wide harm. So with other words, if you and your wife/partner are using the same computer and you do a severe mistake as user, you will be sitting with a sour face at the breakfast table and she will try to cheer you up, while if you did the mistake as “root” she will not speak to you and you will sit there with an even more depressed expression in you face.
That said: in the standard installation as the OP (you will see this often here and stands for operator, we could say “colleague” but like this it is far more sexy) stated before, we have the setting that the userpassword is the same as the root password. This is NOT the best thing from a security point of view but it is a life saver for beginners. So they do not forget it and are locked out.
Whenever you need to make system wide changes (that is for all user using that machine, changes that may destroy the whole functionality of your Linux install, if you do them hastily and wrong or superficially(!)) you are asked for the root password. Root is nothing else than to say the administrator or admin password. Typically if you are asked this password you should begin to think and ask yourself if you “REALLY” need to do this, or if you are just playing around. Whatever you do, it is a safe advice to write down what you are “tweaking”, so you can easier get back if something is NOT to your expectations. Linux is about user control and personal freedom, so you should fiddle around, get better and learn. Just do it safe, with a backup and writing down things. Everybody does a fatal error at some stage. And all users here I would claim, in some stage of their career have lost data.
There are three ways of working as root:
You open a terminal (that is in the start-applications bar, the black square) and you write:
su -
which is “switch user to superuser”. To make it easier for you, there is a substantial difference that you have to know between the later and just
su
:
su gives you root permissions but it does not change the PATH variable and current working directory. so you can’t execute files in /usr/sbin folder.
**su - **changes the PATH too… and root’s home becomes your current working directory. you become proper root and can execute all commands.
So if you really have to change user, do it well. Once the command is done, the prompt of command will switch to red color and all commands from this point will be executed as root/superuser. Do not forget to write
exit
when you are done, so you turn normal user again. It is safe practice.
Second: applications for ***system wide changes ***(like which repositories to use, or install software in YAST) require the root password.
Third: you may execute just a “one shot command” as a superuser. This is done with the command:
sudo
which is more or less “super user do”. You will get a warning that great powers will bring great responsibilities (which refers to the part I did explain you above).
Forth, if you are in “runlevel 3” (that is you work without the desktop on a “mean” black screen, let us say in a couple of month of learning) you can login there as root.
What you should know: NEVER EVER log into KDE or Gnome or another graphical user interface (GUI) as root. This may cause some files to change ownership and in the worst case scenario you may break your graphical desktop giving continuous and nastily persistent error messages that, belief me on my words, will be bone hard to fix. It is not that you cannot, but you will have to have a very sound knowledge about what you are doing and were, not to cause a disaster. And it is totally dangerous and unsafe, taking away every advantage Linux has over other operating systems.
Write down your root password and store it IN A SAFE PLACE(!). The safe place is not on the working desk and it is surprisingly not even a post-it on your screen or behind your back on a pin-wall while chatting on a webcam. But if you have stored it well (e.g. in a closed up locker), it will come handy if you go in holidays and come back…finding out you have simply forgotten it.
What is if you loose your root password? Well, you will unfortunately have to reinstall the operating system, you can in some circumstances recover the root password via the boot loader but I would not count on that. If in these cases you have a separate home partition, there are ways to do so without loosing your data and therefore don’t be afraid to come here and ask before using the “format all” principle.
For every command on the terminal there are two ways to get help:
writing the command with --help (recall the two dashes, not one).
su --help
will give you a short help on the “su” command.
And then the “man”-pages (manual). Here is a niceinfo page on how to use them. Remember search machines (like ixquick, google and others always help).
This is all what comes to my mind. So have fun, do a good backup of your data and begin to make some damage. 
Not very helpful
Does this mean if you are new to linux do not come here
Am 21.04.2013 11:36, schrieb lanzaroteman:
>> hmmm, new to linux …
>
> Does this mean if you are new to linux do not come here
>
No that does not mean that you should not come here, welcome.
It is what PV told you, let me elaborate a bit on that answer.
There is no secret default root password or something like that.
When you initially installed the system the installer asked you at some
point to create a user.
In the screen where you created the user there was a checkbox which is
ticked by default and says that the system administrator (root) will
have the same password as this user.
Many people disable this and for security reasons assign a completely
different password to root (we do not know if you did that).
If you do not know chances are good that you sticked to the default.
So your root password is the original password you gave to your first
user during install.
If you changed later the password for your user the root password will
NOT change to that password, it will still be the original one.
If you cannot login as root in a console because you definitly forgot
root password and its your own computer and so you have physical access
it is easy to reset the root password.
–
PC: oS 12.3 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.10.0 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.3 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.10.0 | HD 3000
HannsBook: oS 12.3 x86_64 | SU4100@1.3GHz | 2GB | KDE 4.10.0 | GMA4500
sorry I just see stakanov has already answered that in great detail,
ignore my previous post
–
PC: oS 12.3 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.10.0 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.3 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.10.0 | HD 3000
HannsBook: oS 12.3 x86_64 | SU4100@1.3GHz | 2GB | KDE 4.10.0 | GMA4500
On 2013-04-21 11:36, lanzaroteman wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2549506 Wrote:
>> On 2013-04-21 00:26, ry2dssrt wrote:
>>>
>>> How to I find the root login and password. I am new to linux and
>>> openSUSE 12.3.
>>
>> Well, install it again and this time write down the password
> Not very helpful
I assume you just installed the system, so do it again, learning from
your mistakes.
You have not given much information to give finer advice, either…
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
On 2013-04-21 09:46, stakanov wrote:
> That said: in the standard installation as the OP (you will see this
> often here and stands for operator, we could say “colleague” but like
> this it is far more sexy) stated before,
Er… I differ
OP in Internet places like this usually stands for “Original Poster” or
“Original Post”. That is, the first post in the current thread.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acronyms:_O
http://www.all-acronyms.com/OP
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
Well Martin, I wouldn’t say. You have mentioned two very good points, the change of password and a way to recover the root password. Remember: “repetitia iuvant” 
It used to be a very simple matter to boot initially to run level 1 and recover one’s password there.
Is this no longer the case ?
¡Jolin! Now it is ufficial, I did watch “the Matrix” too many times
Bear with me.
Yes and no, if he did also have the good idea to set a password to grub (and does remember it either), then maybe not so easy. You will say, this is rare…belief me, nothing is impossible. I had once a user that after I did set up a complete system did find nothing else as job (with an experience of three hours of linux) to edit the grub legacy in the tentative to “change the wallpaper”. Useless to say that she succeed in having far different results…
Besides, if I well understand, he did not forget but followed the default install. He just did not understand the meaning of root / user / superuser / sudo and their password in the context.
Indeed the OP did ask for clarification as to what root may be, and what the password may be.
wrt recovering root password, it has never been difficult to my recollection (unless it has changed over the years). Rather it used to be a simple matter of knowledge.
That may have indeed changed over the years.
There is an openSUSE wiki on this subject of recovering root password: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Recover_root_password
On 2013-04-21 12:56, oldcpu wrote:
>
> It used to be a very simple matter to boot initially to run level 1 and
> recover one’s password there.
>
> Is this no longer the case ?
More or less.
(provided that you can reach runlevel one with systemd)
There is a entire wiki page at opensuse dedicated to this subject 
But I hesitated to give that advice to a new user.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
This simple advise solved my query
“In a default install, root’s password is the same as that of the user you create in the installation.”
Thank you venzkep.
ps: I am using Suse linux version 12.3