Notes:
You will be asked to enter and then confirm a new root password. Assuming you can manage to enter the same password twice, you now have a root user and you can issue the command:
su -
When you enter passwords in Unix-like systems, the prompt remains blank: no blobs or asterisks stand in for the characters in your password. Don’t be put off; the password is being entered nevertheless. Finally, a word of warning: if you habitually do everything as the root user, eventually you will do something both educational and disastrous. For example, you could invoke:
rm -r -f /*
Tip...
Don’t ever use these commands when operating as a superuser!
This will delete all the files in the whole system.
Or you might absent-mindedly type:
$ rm -r -f ./*
That would just delete the files in the current directory. And you do not usually get warnings as root user (other than this one). The first thing you’ll know about your error is when all your files have suddenly vanished.
Only use root privileges when you really need them.
To find out more about the “su” command. see its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_%28Unix%29
su Become a superuser.
passwd Create or change a password associated with the identified user.
The Linux Command Line
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