[ale] FC13 question

[rb211 at tds.net (William Bagwell)]

On Friday 30 July 2010, Drifter wrote:
> There are times when I need to to things as root that are -- for me --
> much easier to do using the GUI aps rather than the command line.

Shhhh! We're not supposed to tell... :)

> Years ago on a Red Hat install, root actually had a directory in /home
> and I could log into the system as root and have the GUI.
>
> This FC13 install doesn't provide that feature. I can create, as root,
> a directory in /home. That's easy enough. ?But what do I have to do so
> that I can log in as root directly just as I log into my regular user
> account? If I try to log in as root now, the system just laughs at me.
>
> Clearly I am missing several steps in the process.

Have not tried this in years but it *used* to work on a Mandriva system.

Open a terminal.
Su to root. (Or what ever your distro uses.)
Type "init 3" and press enter.
(Your GUI will shut down and you will now be at a true command prompt
login.)
Type "root" press enter.
Type your root password, press enter.
Type "startx" and press enter.

What I normally do on any new Mandriva install that *I* will be using or 
administering, is to re-enable the super user file manager. The one
Mandrake removed from the menus about seven years ago! This gives me every 
thing a file manager can do with roots power, with out the risk of 
running the entire GUI as root. A practice which seems to upset folks for 
some strange reason;-)
-- 
William