as stated numerous times in various posts, I am new to Linux. Hi, my name is Andy and I've been a Linaholic for six months. (Welcome Andy!) Thanks for all the posts on the 'awk' command usage, I really appreciate it, it increased my understanding at least 15% (might not seem big but it's efficient. I have yet another question for you professionals, I'm struggling with the root account. Most Linux distros seem to have made a much secure process the accessing and usage of the actual root account. I've already used the command allowrootlogin=true; thus far it still will not allow me to login as root, unless I use the ctrl-alt-f2 method. Yet, even when in this terminal, a lot of root permissions such as changing ownership of various directories are returning with the message, "chown /root could not be completed: you do not have permission to edit"; and the same goes for viewing the root account in an F7 terminal, or modifying other directories such as sbin and bin. Can someone help me to fully!! activate my root account? I'm sure it would be laborious, or perhaps just a few fingerpoints to another URL.

Thanks,
Iconicmoronic

Are you using Gentoo by any chance? To su to root, your user needs to belong to the group "wheel". This isn't exclusive to Gentoo, but it's one of the main distros I know of that doesn't put your account in wheel by default.

A word of warning though: be very careful about changing permissions/deleting things! Why would you want to chown /root? /root is root's home directory: if the permissions are set wrong, root will not be able to write to it. You should not be writing to it as any other user. Likewise, why do you need to modify system directories such as sbin and bin? They are disabled for writing by non-root users for good reasons. If you need to install new programs, I strongly suggest using your distro's package manager whenever possible. It's much less likely to break things that way.

#1. Don't make a recap of all your post on the forum with each thread you start. This board has most likely thousands of members and a good deal of them have never seen any of your previous posts. And who knows how many of those who did and even helped you still remember who exactly they helped, with what and when. And what about the chances of someone who happens to remember is viewing this thread as well? I hope you get my point. It's redundant, and it's a bit of a time waster for those of us who are just looking for your question and see if we can help.

#2. I believe you are trying to make KDM allow you to log in as root and not succeeding, is this true? What distribution/version are you using? And with what username are you logging in on the terminal you're accessing via CTRL+ALT+F2 ?