Granting root privledges?

[Mordac]

I'm getting the hang of the file & folder permissions but can't seem to make any other account act as root. I've added them to the root group, as primary and alternate groups, with no luck. I know it's probably an easy thing, but I grew up in M$ land and haven't found any info that would explain what I'm doing wrong. From what I see in linuxconf it should work, but doesn't.

[jman_77]

well, you can use 'chown' to add/remove owners on specific directories, or the users can 'SU root' if they have the password.

[Mordac]

I'd like to grant others the ability to manage the box and don't want to have to do that every time they/we come across some limitation.
I know in NT if they're a member of the Administrators group they can do anything. I thought being a member of the root group would do the same thing. Guess not.

[HypoLuxa]

I have been trying to figure this out myself with no luck. I did the same thing you did (add other users to root group). Can this be done?

[Gray_Race]

Try Linuxconf, it can be run from the command line our has a GUI interface. One of the configuration options is Users, and you can give various users extra privliges. Like the ability to shutdown or read root/modify root files.

[Mordac]

Been there, done that. I granted the account permission to do everything with no luck. This is what I mean by it "should" work, but yet it doesn't.
Now there was an option to "grant silent" that I haven't tried yet. Hmmm :confused:

[Sweede]

the linux system privileges do not support group membership policies like NT/w2k does.

Linuxconf is the nastiest program you will ever run across and it will mess up configuration files and other things

remove linuxconf and install a package called sudo.

sudo "fakes" (poorly) grant style privileges in unix/linux.
http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/

this is what you want.

[Mordac]

I already have it installed and have had to use sudo to run some commands. But I thought it was only a one-shot deal per command (sudo adduser, etc)? I understand not wanting a normal user to have root privledges and many manuals suggest just logging in to do the job as root and back out again so nothing gets screwed up. I'm in a trusted environment and want to give the other admins root access through their own accounts, not force them to use root.

I just didn't think NT and Linux had such drastic differences when it came to the root account/group. I just figured MS copied the Admin group concept from Unix, along with everything else.