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My friend just bought a netbook with Xubuntu preinstalled and the user was created right in store without giving her a root password. Neither was it an admin user. Was it oem-config's fault or store stаff's?

Tip: To solve this boot into recovery mode, choose root and execute

mount -o remount,rw /
passwd root
int_ua
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  • Your "tip" makes me suspect that you don't understand how administrative privileges work in Ubuntu. Enabling the root account as you suggest is non-standard and recommended against. Why not just use sudo? – ændrük Feb 10 '13 at 03:43
  • Well, yeah, I've forgot to add the line for making the user admin (Notice: it's not, that is what the whole question is about), but XFCE asked exactly the root password to add a network connection [since user is not in sudo group]. Also, where do you see enabling the root account? – int_ua Feb 10 '13 at 03:55

2 Answers2

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Short answer

Sometimes. Typically it will create one of these, but not both:

Long answer

The oem-config command is a symbolic link to ubiquity, Ubuntu's standard installer. Ubiquity runs the script user-setup-ask-oem to determine how user accounts should be configured, and then the script user-setup-apply to actually create them.

The configuration script begins by asking whether a root user should be created:

  • If you answer yes, you have the option to also create a non-root user.
  • If you answer no, you are forced to create a non-root user.

Later on, the account creation script checks to see if you have decided to create a root user:

  • If you have, a root user is created with traditional, implicit administrative privileges. If you have also opted to create a non-root user, that user is created without sudo permissions.
  • If you've decided not to create a root user, the non-root user is created with sudo permissions.

This behavior can be complicated by preeseed configurations.

ændrük
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0

Ubuntu now uses the sudo group rather then the admin group for sudo access.

Post the output of:

id <user>

Where user is the user created with the oem-config ;)

See also What is the difference between the 'sudo' and 'admin' group?

Community
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Panther
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  • I'm not asking about how to identify if user is admin, I'm asking if users created by oem-config end up being admins. Are they? I don't know if it was created by oem-config or some scripts written by the shop. – int_ua Feb 08 '13 at 05:22