root access login

[DrStein99]

I simply want to login ONCE in the beginning of a boot, be granted root level access and NOT be prompted for a password EVER, at least until the session ends and / or I reboot the computer. Is that possible without jeopardizing the functionality of EMC2?

-Erich

[CountZero]

have you set a password for root and tried to login?

[DrStein99]

Yes, that was about 18 hours ago. Along with a plethora of other complications which are too long to list, I was able to find more then a couple spots by google searches where others have ran into trouble on the RTAI (or other components) failing because the user was logged in as root and installed, modified, or updated.

-Erich

[CountZero]

So the problem is not logging in as root but that this causes problems for EMC. Well, don't do it

A bit more helpful, why do you want to log in as root? Perhaps we could find a way around that..

[DrStein99]

I dont care who/what I login as; I just want to modify and configure my system without being prompted for passwords in the GUI and SUDO @ in the terminal.

-Erich

[Jeff Epler]

The manpage sudoers(7) discusses how to configure sudo, including how to tell it not to prompt for a password for certain users. Search for NOPASSWD in the manpage, and remeber to always use 'visudo' to edit the /etc/sudoers file; if you don't, you may end up with a damaged sudoers file that won't allow anyone to sudo.

For a more tutorial discussion of sudoers, you might like web pages like http://sial.org/howto/sudo/ found from a google search 'sudo no password'.

[Ray Henry]

Originally Posted by DrStein99 I dont care who/what I login as; I just want to modify and configure my system without being prompted for passwords in the GUI and SUDO @ in the terminal. -Erich

Alex Joni tells me that you can edit a file, /etc/sudoers and change the following to get rid of sudo password. It says;

# Uncomment to allow members of group sudo to not need a password
# %sudo ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

Just delete the hash mark (#) at the start of the second line. You'd still have to type sudo before commands that require it. I don't know how gksudo, the graphical sudo system, behaves. Probably pops up the password window and you'd just press enter.

The behavior that you want definitely sounds like a real root user. You can set that up if you wish to. I found some info and put links to it here a while back. I've not tried to run EMC2 that way however.

Ten years ago or so we had to run EMC as a root user but lately I mostly use sudo. As I say at the link I do create a root user and occasionally log in there when I've got something really serious to do. I did make a mistake while cleaning up a multipartition hard drive the other day. I issued the command "rm -rf" without really thinking about what partition the terminal was in. The computer slowly sunk into the mud. Dumb 'eh! Must be oldtimers disease.

I also would not run as root if the box was web connected although Linux is much more secure than other OSs. If you are web connected and insist on running as root, watch out for the secure shell key thing. Issue the ssh-keygen thing and give your root user a serious password there. That password has nothing to do with the root login password and you won't need it unless you are committing your work to CVS with us.

The site at the link above also talks about setting up and using a firewall. I'd set one up if the box is anywhere near the web.

HTH

[DrStein99]

Originally Posted by Ray Henry The site at the link above also talks about setting up and using a firewall. I'd set one up if the box is anywhere near the web. HTH

Thanks for the advice. My private networks are protected by commercial grade firewalls at each public entry point, linked by site-to-site VPN.

If I can possibly remove this desktop-pc software like e-mail, games, word-processing, etc... I can fit the whole install on solid-state memory boot. I store my large files, logs, g-code on the fileserver NAS where it belongs. I want this system to only run EMC2 and thats it.

-Erich

[SWPadnos]

Originally Posted by DrStein99 If I can possibly remove this desktop-pc software like e-mail, games, word-processing, etc... I can fit the whole install on solid-state memory boot. I store my large files, logs, g-code on the fileserver NAS where it belongs. I want this system to only run EMC2 and thats it.

If you want a minimal install (within reason - you can always build your own small distribution, but it's probably too much work), you may want to start with the Ubuntu Server install. It's a much smaller ISO (about 350-450M), which doesn't include any of the standard desktop apps like OpenOffice, Firefox, etc. You can run the standard install script from the linuxcnc.org website to get EMC2. Doing that should get you a system that boots to a desktop, but doesn't have all the extras that normal desktop users "need".

Note that you will need to edit the grub boot menu, since it doesn't automatically set the machine to boot the realtime kernel.

- Steve

[DrStein99]

Originally Posted by SWPadnos Note that you will need to edit the grub boot menu, since it doesn't automatically set the machine to boot the realtime kernel. - Steve

Thats mainly where my trip ended last night. I got UBUNTU loaded the way I wanted it, and spent alot of hours trying to load EMC2 on top of that; and actually had to find answers in some chat-log that was posted somewhere about the RTAI and grub loader, something about kernal 24.22 16 (I cant remember version exact).

That standard install script did not work, for certain over the 5 different tries in the course of 18 hours. If it does, the instructions are missing a crutial probably a 1-liner that I lack the experience in seeing.

-Erich

[Big John T]

Erich,

Do you want this so you can edit files that are owned by root?

If so I have a shortcut on my desktop that I drag and drop files into to edit... I'm at my machine shop so if you need this I can reply this evening as I don't remember the exact syntax...

John

[Scott Thornley]

Originally Posted by DrStein99 I simply want to login ONCE in the beginning of a boot, be granted root level access and NOT be prompted for a password EVER, at least until the session ends and / or I reboot the computer. Is that possible without jeopardizing the functionality of EMC2? -Erich

I don't know the breadth and depth of your *nix experience, but routinely logging in directly as root is generally frowned upon. Heck, I've hardened systems that were were being installed in .mil and .gov facilities, and a requirement was that root could only log in from the console, and not over the network. Getting physical access to the systems was nearly impossible, so su and sudo were mandatory.

Sounds to me like you are (were) doing initial system configuration, where you really are doing a bunch of root level work, so sudoing all the time is a pain in the butt. Keeping with the spirit of Ubuntu, I suggest that you just:

login as your user
sudo su -

You're now good to go as root until you exit. When you are done with configuration, you aren't left with a system that is security compromised. And I'm not necessarily talking about security from external users, as I'm talking about security from one's own missteps.

Regards,
Scott