How do I become a super user on the raspberrry pi

rhydian98 wrote:

 

Hello

 

When i got my RPI working it would not let me poweroff unless i was a "superuser". how do I become a superuser on the rpi.

Assuming you are using either Debian or Raspbian distros the comand ro shutdown would be:

sudo shutdown -h now

for immediate shutdown.

sudo shutdown -r now

for a reboot.

The sudo command allows non root users to make use of many of the functions normally only available to a system admin logged in as root user.

e.g. to edit the boot config file you could use

nano /boot/config.txt

but this will NOT allow you to save the changes.

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

will give you root level access and allow changes to be saved. (nano is a text editor)

PLEASE TAKE CARE WHEN USING ALL THE ABOVE COMMANDS. Remember backup is your best friend.

Hope it helps

Ray

Nice answer Ray - short and to the point - you must be in the Training business

Graham Blackshaw wrote:

 

Nice answer Ray - short and to the point - you must be in the Training business

Thanks Graham and nicely guessed. I wore many hats over my career and did some training for couple of years. I finally realised it was easier to do the logic and coding than to teach it. Any way I hope the user finds the answer helpful.

Happy new year all

Ray

For the most part, you can use 'sudo', but if that's gone AWOL, you can use the 'su' command.

I must emphise what Ray has said here. Do be exteremely careful of what you type when you are the superuser (or root), you can cause plenty of damage to the system, so it's wise to make backups.

Hope it helps you out,

Jamie

Side note: Most of the distros should have both commands. There were a few times where 'sudo' was not avalible, so 'su' should serve as an alternative.

Little reminder:
you should be logged by default (at Raspian /Debian) as

Username: pi

Password: raspberry

(EDIT: by doing that you become superuser)

It should be done after boot, before "startx" command (start GUI). At least first time you boot RPi.

If you made auto login / auto startx enabled ( http://elinux.org/RPi_Debian_Auto_Login ), you don't have to do it again, so

it is easy for new user to forget password (or procedure).

Everytime when you want to "order" some important system commands you have to use  "sudo" command (or "su" but it is not the same), as a prefix (in front) of actual command(s).

After that you will be immediately prompted for password, so this is what you have to enter ("raspberry").

One more for new users:

When you are asked for password, letters you type in are not visible: It is not error, it is common because of security reasons.

If you mistype letter at password prompt, you can not delete it and continue to type: it will be treated as wrong password. You should start over again.

The information and advice given above is  correct, but it's worth adding a little note about the typical use of sudo versus su.  You'll be using sudo mostly as you learn and gain experience with the Unix command line, but sudo is akin to the safety wheels on a learner's bicycle.  It's an important facility and greatly helps to reduce accidents and the tears that can result from them.  Once you are an expert though, you'll most commonly detach those wheels from your Unix bike, because they often get in the way of effective cycling.

In other words, as you gain experience you'll find that your use of sudo decreases, and that instead you'll pop up an xterm window su'd to root (or similarly on a VT) to perform essential operations that need root privilege, dropping root or the whole window (or logging out of the VT) when no longer needed.  And if your fun Pi experience ever turns into a career, you'll discover that use of sudo is extremely rare among professional Unix system administrators.  They're paid to know what they're doing and to not make the elementary mistakes that sudo partly mitigates.

Have fun!

just type in as the username root and then click on the bottom-left bird (AKA start), click on log-off, and click shutdown.

hope this helps!

If you use sudo adduser to add a new user and you want that user to be able to use sudo, you should add them to the sudo group.  There are a number of ways to do that, like with sudo adduser their_username sudo.  The official way to add someone to a bunch of groups at once would be sudo vigr (if you know how to use vi), or I just use sudo nano /etc/group (which you would not normally do if more than one admin could edit the file at the same time). /etc/group is a comma separated list of users for each group like:

video:x:44:pi,efflandt

Note that:

sudo halt is same as sudo shutdown -h now

sudo reboot is same as sudo shutdown -r now

Thank you everybody for your help. I have found that if i use sudo su then it allows me to poweroff. thanks again