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I know my password, I used the same one for root as my personal user. This is my 2nd time reinstalling the OS because it won't let me login as root. Even when I login as my own user and then "su root" it won't take my password.

Am I missing something that needs to be setup about the root user?

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Seems like you are a hardcore redhat fan.root user is normally disabled in ubuntu due to security reasons. Look at the sudo concept https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

You can do one thing to make root user active

type

$sudo passwd root

It will prompt you for password. Enter your new password then you can try

$ su

this will drop you directly to the root shell

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    What does Red Hat have to do with the root user?
    – joschi
    Aug 11, 2010 at 6:34
  • 1
    Because RH doesn't disable the root user logins, Ubuntu does.
    – mistiry
    Aug 11, 2010 at 13:47
  • @Mistiry: Almost all Unix distributions (several hundreds of Linux distros, most BSDs, Minix) come with root enabled. RedHat is not special in any way.
    – u1686_grawity
    Aug 11, 2010 at 20:10
  • I didn't realize it was pretty standard on ubuntu.... thanks for the heads up.
    – Ben
    Aug 11, 2010 at 20:42
  • @grawity: I never said "RedHat is the ONLY one", but it is well known that Red Hat and RH-based distros do not explicitly disallow root logins, Ubuntu does. The original answerer mentioned Red Hat, and my original comment was @joschi's comment asking a question specifically about Red Hat, hence my answer.
    – mistiry
    Aug 16, 2010 at 13:43

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