Just installed 13.2 64bit KDE today, and am wondering if I made an error during install with regards to user designation. There is only a single user and I think the installer asked if the password given was the same as SU and I agreed. In any case, as I am configuring the system and going into YaST, sometimes it asks me for the SU password, and at the moment it just goes to YaST. Is there some way to decouple my single user from SU, and assign it a different password from SU? I looked in the user section of yast, and it appears that the single user is just a ‘user’. Not sure why the system is so happy to return to YaST - I think there used to be a toolbar icon on the bottom that warned you that you were in SU mode and allowed you to exit, but I am not seeing that.
On 02/15/2015 06:16 PM, rogerh113 wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Just installed 13.2 64bit KDE today, and am wondering if I made an error
> during install with regards to user designation. There is only a single
> user and I think the installer asked if the password given was the same
> as SU and I agreed. In any case, as I am configuring the system and
> going into YaST, sometimes it asks me for the SU password, and at the
> moment it just goes to YaST. Is there some way to decouple my single
> user from SU, and assign it a different password from SU? I looked in
> the user section of yast, and it appears that the single user is just a
> ‘user’. Not sure why the system is so happy to return to YaST - I think
> there used to be a toolbar icon on the bottom that warned you that you
> were in SU mode and allowed you to exit, but I am not seeing that.
>
> Thanks in advance – Roger
>
>
Open a konsole and follow the procedure for changing the root password,
which is the command “passwd”. You have to first become root by typing
“su” in order to change the root password. If you type “man passwd” then
it gives the manual for how to change your root password.
As far as yast not requiring login, I noticed in 13.2 it seems like once
you start yast the first time and give the password, you don’t have to
keep giving the root password. I don’t know when it resets. On earlier
versions that I used, you had to give the password every time you opened
yast.
If you don’t want to auto login when you boot up, then in Yast -> User
and Group Management, at the bottom right corner of the Users tab are
the Expert options. If you go there and click on “login settings” then
you can uncheck “Auto login.”
Your user password and the root password are not coupled in any way. They are just set to the same by default.
If you change your user password, this will not change the root password and vice-versa.
The reason why it goes straight to YaST without asking for a password is that “kdesu” by default remembers the password for some time so that you don’t have to enter it every single time. There is a checkbox in kdesu’s password dialog “Remember password” that’s ticked by default, untick it and it won’t remember the password. You could change the default in ~/.kde4/share/config/kdesurc if you wanted to.
This would be exactly the same if you had different passwords for root and your user though.
Thank you all very much for the comments and information. It sounds like the setup is fine and working as expected. Once the system is set up, I don’t find myself going into YaST very often, so no real major risk. My biggest concern is that the wife also uses the system - as an aggressive speed typist, sometimes she accidently hits a series of wrong keys, and I didn’t want SU rights floating out there and the system spiraling out into a black hole.
Thanks again and I do appreciate all of the help - it really does make a great difference – Roger
Well, the root password is only remembered for 5 minutes I think, and it definitely is forgotten when you logout.
But as I wrote, you can disable this by unticking the checkbox “Remember Password” in KDE’s root password dialog.
To disable it by default, change ~/.kde4/share/config/kdesurc to:
[Passwords]
Keep=false
That only affects the one user though of course. For disabling it by default for all users, create a file /etc/kde4/share/config/kdesurc with exactly that content…
Give her her own account then she can set her desktop to her liking
Just log out when you are done and then she can log in and she will have all her settings and you will have all yours. If she does not know root password then she can’t hurt anything in the system