missing admin account

[trento]

Hi, I just isntalled Fedora OK, and set an account and just found out that it's not admin.

I actually added wrong item on drub menu and now trying to remove it and stuck with "NO PERMISSIONS" on anything.

Not sure if I missed that info during installation or not? I believ that I set root account and remember its password, but it failed to login.
Can anybody point me where I did this mishap, how to gain admin account. It's on my own PC.


Thanks all + happy holidays.

Trent

[bob]

You'll find plenty of threads on "missing" root account. Basically, the Fedora devs have made it difficult to log in as root in an attempt to avoid beginners from completely trashing their OS through errors with root.

Now, there are ways to get an actual root account, if you really need it for some reason, but most of us simply open a terminal and use "su -" to gain access when necessary.

Here's a thread that might give some info: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1428914

[smr54]

Howdy Trent. Are you sure you have no admin account? (In Linux, it's known as root.)

A typical Fedora installation, that is, where you choose all defaults, works like this--during installation you create an account called root, and give it a password. However, when you boot the first time, you have the opportunity to create a second account.

To make it more interesting, that first account, root, isn't permitted to log into the login screen that you see when you boot. Sometimes, it seems (judging from these forums) the firstboot script, the one where you set that second user account, fails to run or gets overlooked by the user.

You should be able to, when you see that screen, do ctl+alt+F1 (or possibly F2) and get a console, just a black screen with a login prompt. You can log in as root there.

---------- Post added at 08:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:14 PM ----------

Ah, I missed the part where you said you DO have an account where you can log in.

In that case, follow what Bob said, just open a terminal and do su -

[trento]

Tx so much Bob and Smr !
I'm amazed with so warm welcome to my question. Let me try all you suggested.
su - and crtl-alt-f2 both works, in second case I have terminal window on whole screen and can't do anything with it.


Thanks again

Best
Trent

[bob]

Exactly what are you trying to do? My comment on the terminal and using "su -" is to do command-line entries. This kind of thing: http://www.linuxcommand.org/

For instance: Let's say that you want to modify the grub menu to show the menu on every boot and perhaps to increase the time it lasts so you can make a selection between OS's.

So, let's open the terminal (a small window will do nicely) and then log in as full root: "su -" and give your password.

Next, let's enter a command to open the menu:

gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

What you'll get is the current menu for booting Fedora and any other OS you've got on your machine (such as Windows). Okay, now let's make that menu visible on every boot. See the "hiddenmenu" line? Put a # ahead of hiddenmenu so it looks like this: "#hiddenmenu"

Okay, that tells the computer to ignore (that's what the "#" does) the hidden status of the menu and to make it visible.

Now, let's look at the "timeout=0" (might be some other value than zero). So, if you want to make a selection, you'll need more than zero seconds, right? Well, let's move that up to 5 seconds and make it "timeout=5".

All done then? Save and close the menu window and type "exit" to leave root and "exit" again to close the window. Reboot and test.

The object here is that if you're not experienced, trying to do stuff in a gui root environment makes it pretty easy to make a system-wide error, so it's better to learn some commands and handle things as root that way. Also, if you're using the gui menu and there's a root permission that's needed, Fedora will give you a pop-up for your password. Stuff such as System > Administration areas will generally require passwords.

[bob]

Just a suggestion, Trento, but I'd check out all the info in the Fedora Set-Up Guides and Linux Help links above and also in the Read This First Forum. Most new users find that they've got things pretty well set up after that.

BTW, if you're trying to set up 3D graphics on your machine, Leigh123linux has an excellent tutorial under Guides & Solutions.

[trento]

Thanks again all guys (and girls) for you kind advices.

I just vi conf file , removed entry I don't wont and it works fine after restart.
All you expert info much appreciate, I feel realy nice in Linux world.

Best
+ Happy NY
T