I installed Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to my new laptop (HP EliteBook 6930p), and first on my to-do list is to set the root password so I can do additional package installations and configurations. But this time, after I unlocked and set password for my root account, i still can’t login (via terminal) as root. I even tried to set password three times just to make sure i typed it correctly. As usual, if something is not working out of the box the next thing to do is to search for ‘known issues’ for laptop brand/model. Then I found similar report on Ubuntu Forums from they gave a link to ”Policy on log-in-as-root tutorials” with explanation on Ubuntu’s RootSudo policy. I did get a chance to look further on this as to which version it was implemented.

So if you really need to login as root you can either use the ”sudo -i” to simulate the root login (this will ask for your password and log you in as root), or enable the root account ”sudo passwd root” (this will ask for your password and will prompt you to enter new root password).