[Discuss] Ubuntu 8.1 administrative privileges

[stanfish]

OK but I am not very familiar with command prompt and my little 
experience with emacs was not pleasant. So is there any way to make the 
Windows the default in Grub/menu.lst through the text editing utilities 
available on the desktop?
SJF

Deryk Barker wrote:
> stanfish wrote:
>> I need some help with this. I have just installed Ubuntu 8.1 
> oooh, that makes you well ahead of the rest of us...unless you mean 8.04 
> :-)
>> as a dual installation with Windows. From what I can figure out from 
>> the Help menu is that the first user should have administrative 
>> privileges. Which seems to be the case when I upgraded the 
>> installation with the security upgrade files. At that point a pop-up 
>> appeared asking for my password. Password was accepted and 
>> installation completed successfully.
>>
>> The problem arose when i wanted to edit the Grub/menu.lst file to 
>> bring the Windows entry to the top of the list. The edit was refused 
>> (I was not permitted), I was unable to figure out how to get root 
>> access to do this. Can any Ubuntu users shed some light on this for me?
> Ubuntu doesn't set a root password, instead it uses the sudo command.
> 
> Simply preface any command that needs root privelege with sudo, as in:
> 
> sudo emacs menu.lst
> 
> you will be prompted for your password - that's *you* password - the 
> first time. For a certain period after (30 minutes?) you can use sudo 
> without reentering your password.
> 
> If you must have continuing root access then do as I sometimes do:
> 
> sudo su -
> 
> 
> 
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