5

I was able to to do it on 17.04, but i guess the display manager has changed

I know it is not recommended. But it eases a lot of things for me.

Sam Thomas
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  • This should work: https://askubuntu.com/a/369013/, just remember Ubuntu 17.10 uses gdm3. – pomsky Oct 22 '17 at 22:23
  • I knew you would be the first to comment lol @pomsky . But no it didn't work... but thanks for pointing it out that it used gdm3 – Sam Thomas Oct 22 '17 at 22:59

1 Answers1

8

This link points it out for Debian, but instead of daemon.conf just edit custom.conf. Everything else is the same.

In a nutshell, first run

sudo vim /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

Under [security] type AllowRoot=true so that it looks like

[security]
AllowRoot=true

Save and exit. Then run

sudo vim /etc/pam.d/gdm-password

Within this file you have comment out the line containing 

auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet_success

so that it looks like this

#auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet_success

Save the file and exit and reboot.

pomsky
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Sam Thomas
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  • This answer worked for me. – Michael Jan 12 '18 at 04:35
  • @Michael Upvote it then :) – Sam Thomas Jan 16 '18 at 20:24
  • Too late, already did :) it seems some poor soul voted you down for some reason. Thanks for the answer anyways! – Michael Jan 16 '18 at 22:53
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    Also a) in /root/.profile, change "mesg n || true" to "tty -s && mesg n || true". b) pam restriction above is in /etc/pam.d/gdm-autologin and gdm-fingerprint if using autologin or fingerprint scanner. This is with 18.04. – Aelian Dec 09 '18 at 08:18
  • @Jeevaka what u said applies to 17.10 as well, but has nothing to do with enabling GUI root login. The tty part you mentioned is to enable the root prompt once you assign password to root and the other part of for additional features like you mentioned. Nevertheless people visiting this post will find it helpful. Thanks – Sam Thomas Dec 09 '18 at 08:52
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    Thank you so much. Finally it works for me after searching for all links over google – Deca Mar 20 '19 at 09:14