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I'd installed Ubuntu 10.10 inside Windows 7.

At the time of installation it didn't asked for any root account but when I'm trying to install DB2 it want access to root account.

How can I go to root account in terminal of ubuntu 10.10?

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help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo "Just remember, when sudo asks for a password, it needs YOUR USER password, and not the Root account password." –  arrange Sep 28 '11 at 8:59
@arrange: beside of my own account there is always a root account. How can I access it? –  Mohammad Faisal Sep 28 '11 at 9:03
1. Please please read the link. 2. What do you mean by accessing here? –  arrange Sep 28 '11 at 9:07
possible duplicate of How to know my root password? –  Jorge Castro Sep 28 '11 at 23:45
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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Terminal Try sudo su and enter your password. This will allow you to start apps as root and do administrator tasks.

GUI Start a program with gksu to give ir root privileges. Press Alt+F2 and write gksu <application name>

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Why would you recommend running sudo su? That's usually a bad idea. It's much better to use sudo for each command. –  Jo-Erlend Schinstad Sep 28 '11 at 9:15
Maybe because the question was "How can I go to root account in terminal"? –  Sergey Sep 28 '11 at 9:19
This probably isn't ideal, you want either sudo -i or sudo -s –  Jorge Castro Sep 28 '11 at 23:46
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We don't use a password for the root account in Ubuntu. Instead, you prepend the command with sudo, so that instead of /etc/init.d/someservice start, you'll run sudo /etc/init.d/someservice start. There are many benefits to this approach. First of all, you don't have to be root all the time, but instead run single commands as root. That also means each command gets logged and that different users can run root commands without sharing a password. It also enables you to fine-tune access. You can enable a user to run a specific command as root without giving complete access to the root account. 

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Isn't there any problem as I'd installed ubuntu 10.10 inside windows 7? I think some of the software or services requires root account to do a task. Isn't it? –  Mohammad Faisal Sep 28 '11 at 12:31
The root account is used. You just can't login as root. If you use <code>sudo apt-get install blah</code>, then <code>apt-get install</code> is run as root, but you'll use your own password. So, in a company, for instance, you might allow a web administrator to run <code>/etc/init.d/apache</code> as root, but nothing else. This is a great benefit of using sudo. –  Jo-Erlend Schinstad Sep 28 '11 at 19:29
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