cant access root!!

when you install the distro, it sound ask you to define a root password as one of the last things you do before your first reboot. I have never played with kubuntu, but all distros have you define a root password at the end of the installation.

kubuntu (and ubuntu derivatives) does not "have" a root account, per se. It forces you to do everything via sudo. Technically, that is safer, but I kinda find it a hassle when you have systems maintenance to do, and also out of habit. So, just issue a sudo passwd, and set your root password. Technically, you can also just do a sudo -c, or something... that opens a root console.

ubuntuguide.org

Good resource for Ubuntu, includes how to lock and unlock the root user. As well as I believe some software administration tips.

And to use apt you dont need to seperately download the software, apt will take take of that for you. What you may need to download seperate due to copyright issues is the libdvdcss library, which is the DVD decryption library.

Anyways the basic rundown is...

>apt-cache search <Name of Package here>

should return a list of all packages matching the string entered above for name of package, so typing xine will return a list of all packages that are in the apt cache of the repositories you have set up. Lots of big words there, basicly you just need to know the command for right now, Ill get more into other things later.

>apt-get install <Name of Package>

This will actually download and install a prebuilt binary for the package, but you HAVE to use the name of the package as found using the search command. It should take care of everything else for you short of installing symbolic links(aka shortcuts) anywhere you might want them(Desktop if you use it for example, or menu, though I think Ubuntu sets up apt to install in the gnome menu as well, I dont know about kubuntu)

Another option though that I believe comes preinstalled in ubuntu is to use synaptic. Synaptic is a GUI for apt and can be a little easier to understand, and as I said I think it is included as part of the default installation.

Have fun, post up more questions you might get.

Seablade

Yea they probably removed libdvdcss from the repository for copyright issues, that is the one I thought you might have to download and install yourself, but it shouldnt be required to install any other package, just to play dvds in xine and other packages, but the basic functions should all be there.

sudo is a bit finicky on occasion, I forgot and should have put in that previous post that both of those commands should be run with sudo preceeding them. I am not at my ubunutu box and cant be for some time so I cant type it in and figure it out unfortunatly, if you cant get it running with sudo, then you can try unlocking root and running it as root(See website above on how to do that) but dont forget to lock root back after that.

Seablade

just as a curious thing, to recover the root password just boot as "single" and then "passwd root" to set a new one .

In Ubuntu, you can switch to the root account with the command "sudo su".

hi.

just some stuff on ubuntu/kubuntu

first of, use ubuntu.org to get you starteed

to get root privilages use:

#sudo su
Password:

or say you want to install thunderbird:
#sudo apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird
Password:

if you pre-downloaded a deb file and want to install it:
#dpkg -i filename.deb

to install xine, the command is:
#sudo apt-get install xine-ui

make sure to edit your sources.list as told by ubuntuguide. you can find it at: /etc/apt/sources.list

Only applies to those distros that have a single user runlevel set up, not all do, and not all people leave it enabled.

Seablade

oh, didn't know that. thank you!

Ok.. I'll bite on this one... what distribution doesn't have a single user runlevel?

Very curious.

Runlevel can be set in /etc/inittab. I don't know of any distros that force the runlevel to '1' (Single-User Mode) by default. Isn't that usually only used for debugging?

I cant think of the names of them right off hand, I know I have used one or two in my time in linux(5+ years or so). Runlevels are only a series of scripts that are run to execute programs/daemons/etc and can be set up or removed by hand if needed. I would be almost willing to bet most of the security enhanced distros dont use a single user runlevel like that(In this instance when I am saying single user I mean the single user runlevel found in the larger distros that you dont need to know the root password to get access to the computer, some distros have a runlevel where you can only log in as root, or you cant access the computer, for maitenence purposes only- for say if your HD crashes and FSCK cant fix it by itself, that is closer to what it should be in my opinion if it existed at all)

Seablade

You missed the claim.. it was that some distributions do not ship with a single user runlevel... no distribution defaults to single user (that I know of).