Home » Linux HowTos and Tips

How To enable root logins in KDE / kwin on Suse Linux

Submitted by kim on Fri, 2005-05-27 22:50.

How to Enable Root Logins

The Problem

You need to log into your Xwindow environment as root to change your configuration, but KDM won't let you. When you try to log in as root you see an error which reads:

Root logins are not allowed.

How rude!

This is actually fairly easy to fix, but if you're new to Unix/Linux keep this in mind: the root account is generally only used for administration tasks. Running a *nix box as root as a general rule is a bad thing.

The Solution

Fortunately this is an easy fix. You will need to restart your XWindow environment for this change to take effect so make sure you save your work before continuing.

1. Open the file /opt/kde3/share/config/kdm/kdmrc
2. Look for a line containing the text to "AllowRootLogin" - depending on the distribution you run you may find that the line is either commented out (has a # to the left) or it is set to false.

This line must be uncommented and must not be set to false. The line is located somewhere around line 246. See the following example:

# Allow root logins?
# Default is true
AllowRootLogin=true

In this example, the setting is not commented out (the two lines previous to AllowRootLogin are) and it is set to true, enabling root to log in. Save the file after making the change and then restart your Xwindow environment.

up
» printer-friendly version | quote | 10941 reads

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

how is one suppose to edit

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2006-04-27 18:58.

how is one suppose to edit the file? we are not logged in root so how can we do it in konsole? please help!! whats the commands to edit this file?

» reply | quote

OK another way-delayed reply

Submitted by kim on Thu, 2007-08-09 01:26.

OK another way-delayed reply but here goes:

you can switch to a virtual console (ctrl-alt-F), log in as root, and use nano, pico, vi, emacs, or whatever.

Likewise, in KDE, you can "kdesu kate" to launch kate with root privileges.

» reply | quote

The same in Fedora 5

Submitted by vcardenas (not verified) on Thu, 2006-10-12 11:09.

Thank you very much, your solution worked for me but i have Fedora 5. There are two files to edit, and are in another location.

Files to edit in Fedora Core 5:
/etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc
/etc/X11/xdm/kdmrc

» reply | quote

How to do this in Debian

Submitted by lindylex (not verified) on Sat, 2007-05-26 23:49.

The files are located in debian in these two locations. You should edit both.

/var/run/kdm/kdmrc
/etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc

» reply | quote

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Post new comment

*
*
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.


*

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web and e-mail addresses are automatically converted into links.
  • You may post code using <code>...</code> (generic) or <?php ... ?> (highlighted PHP) tags.
More information about formatting options
Verify comment authorship
Captcha Image: you will need to recognize the text in it.
*
Please type in the letters/numbers that are shown in the image above.