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To start with I will say that none of the supposed 'answers' for this here & elsewhere have worked for me (referring to this: How to Enable Root Login on Ubuntu 17.04 )

In what follows I am referring to an old PC of mine that has Ubuntu 17.04 + Mate on it at the moment.

This system is not meant to be permanent - and some operations are simply not succeeding because I NEED to be the root user - not getting the job done with sudo, not nohow that I have been able to find.

Please - no scoldings or lectures about the dangers of this choice. (Yes, I know this is dangerous, etc.,etc.,etc...) On this system that is irrelevant as it will be replaced with other distros quite soon as it is just a 'play' machine with zero data on it of any importance.

Used to be this was not such a big deal & I've done it before on earlier versions - but 17.04 is fighting me on this & I am really stuck.

After making a few mods I can choose to log in as either of the 2 users shown when it boots - but cannot enter a username in LightDM. After logging in, I can also do su -, enter the password & get to # in terminal, but this is not the desired goal here and also not getting the job done.

How can I fully unlock (& de-obfuscate) the user & group root to allow a full GUI log in as root?!?

(Also, if anyone will affirm what steps accomplish the same goal for 16.04 that would be helpful as well because I will soon be using that version with Mate on the same old PC??)

(The info posted based upon Unity didn't work on my system with MATE...)

Thanks for any helpful replies!!

Zanna
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hagrid small
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  • This reads like a rant – jones0610 Jun 08 '17 at 20:58
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    You could reduce the size of your question to maybe the half of it by leaving out the rants, making it more appealing to read. Anyway, have you read https://askubuntu.com/a/369013/367990 ? If yes, please describe in detail at which point the instructions do not work and what exactly goes wrong. However, although you stated several times that you don't want to hear it, I feel the strong need to advise you again that it would be much better if you tried to fix your sudo issue and get whatever you are doing working that way. Have you considered asking a question about that? – Byte Commander Jun 08 '17 at 21:00
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    That is one long wall of text and it is TL;DR . I don't know why you think you can lecture us and not expect a lecture in return. Graphical log in as root is not supported either upstream, by the gnome or kde projects. Is is both dangerous and completely unnecessary. Log in as a normal user and obtain root via sudo, gksu, or any of the standard supported methods. Enabling root log in will require you so modify the source code and is completely unsupported. – Panther Jun 08 '17 at 21:01
  • Did everything mentioned here: https://askubuntu.com/a/369013/367990 - still no joy - and as bodhi zazen says - it is most likely impossible. Such a hard-wired restriction imposed upon any experienced user makes for good reason to use a less restricted distro IMO. As for the criticisms of my posting style and the TL:DR --- thanks folks. – hagrid small Jun 08 '17 at 21:04
  • Could you please add a little more detail? What exactly did you do, what did you want to achieve and what happened instead? Did you encounter any warning or error messages? Please reproduce them in their entirety in your question. You can select, copy and paste terminal content and most dialogue messages in Ubuntu. (see How do I ask a good question?) In the mean time I'm voting to close this question as a duplicate because that's what it likely is (barring misunderstandings on all sides). – David Foerster Jun 09 '17 at 07:40

1 Answers1

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Just did a clean install of Ubuntu MATE to help you out. It is actually a quite simple process for enabling a root login to the system.

First, give the root account a password:

sudo passwd root

Next, enable the root account:

sudo usermod -U root

Now, if you want to just type in the username, including root and not see a list of users, create a new file /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/10-ubuntu.conf and add the following lines to it:

[SeatDefaults]
user-session=mate
greeter-show-manual-login=true    
greeter-hide-users=true    
allow-guest=false

Make sure that the above file has the correct permissions:

sudo chmod 644 /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/10-ubuntu.conf
sudo chown root:root /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/10-ubuntu.conf

Then when you reboot you should see the following login allowing you to type in the username you want:

enter image description here

Type in root and the password you set:

enter image description here

You should be logged in as root now:

enter image description here

Hope this helps!

Terrance
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  • Thanks for such an amazingly helpful reply Terrance !!! When I do this=> sudo usermod -U root - the response I get is 'invalid user ID 'root' ' - which is baffling to me - might you be kind enough to assist me some more with this ?? Thanks. – hagrid small Jun 08 '17 at 23:31
  • Yes, thank you. BTW: Before asking for more help I've searched on "invalid user ID" with & without several other terms & got hundreds of unrelated results...could be my searching skills are not up to this task ?!? – hagrid small Jun 08 '17 at 23:38
  • Thanks again Terrance !! sudo su - root brings on the # just fine; sudo passwd -u root gives me password expiry information changed - so all seems relatively well except that the log i remains the same ?? Thanks. – hagrid small Jun 08 '17 at 23:51
  • Yes there is a lightdm.conf file as well as a users.conf file - this site is asking if we should move this to chat ?? – hagrid small Jun 09 '17 at 00:01
  • @hagridsmall I don't have time to chat. I am leaving my location where I am at and I don't know when I will be back on. Try moving those files out of that folder and only going with the file I put in there to create. – Terrance Jun 09 '17 at 00:03
  • Thanks for your time & efforts at helping me Terrance & I wish you a great rest of your day !! – hagrid small Jun 09 '17 at 00:04
  • @Terrance but his network and sound won't be running at this point, will it? – heynnema Jun 09 '17 at 00:04
  • I'm not Terrance - but I can affirm that the network is working and as for sound - it looks OK, but is not needed for what I want to do in a root session, so it is not worrisome to me. – hagrid small Jun 09 '17 at 01:52
  • @hagridsmall Since maybe some of the things you have tried did not work, there is always the possibility of starting it all over with a reinstall so that it is clean, then following my instructions to enable it? Just a thought since you stated that there will be no data in it at all. – Terrance Jun 09 '17 at 14:14
  • Thanks Again Terrance !! I will be starting all over again soon as you suggest - but wanted to use this access to work at another problem that was resisting all efforts to fix it - before ditching this installation. – hagrid small Jun 10 '17 at 04:27
  • Finally - to whomever INSISTS that the post here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/369012/how-to-run-a-complete-gui-as-root has the solution - thanks for your contribution here as I would have posted that link EXCEPT that my new user here could not. I tried that FIRST & it did not solve the problem. What Terrance provided DID solve the problem though. Suggesting that at the very top is unhelpful and very misleading IMO. – hagrid small Jun 10 '17 at 04:31