enable root GDM (GNOME) login with Fedora 10
Ahh yes, another Fedora release, another set of annoyances to deal with. This time around it took them less than 10 minutes to piss me off by disabling root logins from the GDM. Read below on a super simple edit to change this and allow the root login to happen.
Log in as your average user, then elevate yourself to root (su -). First, make a backup of the file you’re about to edit:
# cp -a /etc/pam.d/gdm /etc/pam.d/gdm.orig
Now edit /etc/pam.d/gdm and change the line:
auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet
…to:
auth required pam_succeed_if.so user quiet
…save it, log out and now you can log back into GDM as root.
Because I know someone will get all high on their hobby horse screaming about how insecure, blah blah blah this is well I have a tip for you: some of us know what we’re doing and have a need to log into GDM as root for certain reasons. It really irks me that Red Hat/Fedora over the years has denigrated into a distribution with so many idiotic things – I swear Fedora 7 was the last release that I actually liked.
Update #3: this post has quickly become the most read one on my entire site, over 8,200 people in about 3 months and still going. Hint, hint Fedora team – thousands of people hate the change you made.
Update #2: a friendly reader (hi John!) sent over an email after reading the man page (I know – who reads man pages? well, unless it’s rsync or curl… :) ) mentioning:
From my reading of the pam_succeed_if man page, it looks like your posted solution might be a syntax error, and one should just delete the whole line
Indeed, it appears an even cleaner solution is to just delete the whole line entirely. Additionally I noticed that Red Hat even got the line wrong — the “quiet” is a flag that’s supposed to go before the condition, whereas they tacked it on the end. Quick, someone go file a bug report on the syntax then someone else follow it up that we should just delete the whole line. :)
Update #1: you are not alone, fearless readers — in less than 24 hours this issue is now the #1 searched/found thing on this site.
It appears I’m not the only one who thinks this was an undesirable decision on the part of the Fedora team.
hey man, you saved my day! cheers….|:0),
threaderslash
2008-12-06 at 17:33
[...] You cannot login as root. Fix is described at http://rivviepop.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/enable-root-gdm-gnome-login-with-fedora-10/ [...]
Site With The Lamp » Fedora 10 glitches part 2
2008-12-09 at 18:13
[...] let’s re-enable root logins for the desktop. It’s really simple. Fortunately, rivviepop phantom figured this out before I did. It’s just a matter of editing /etc/pam.d/gpm and change the [...]
Migrating a MythTV server from pre-Fedora 10 to Fedora 10 | Michael J. Hammel - The Graphics Muse
2008-12-26 at 11:25
You can do that without any changes aswel.
Just open another terminal
login as root
them type
startx — :3
Easy …..
If your system don’t have enough memory to run 2 x windows just kill the first.
Its not very wise to use your system always as root but if you really need …
leoaraujo79@gmail.com
leoaraujo79
2009-02-04 at 03:35
@leoaraujo – you think it’s unwise. I think I know what I’m doing and can operate as root just fine. You can either hold onto the blade of a knife and not cut yourself or you can’t, it’s as simple as that.
rivviepop
2009-02-04 at 16:53
Log in as your average user, then elevate yourself to root (su -). First, make a backup of the file you’re about to edit:
# cp -a /etc/pam.d/gdm /etc/pam.d/gdm.orig
Now edit /etc/pam.d/gdm and change the line:
auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet
…to:
auth required pam_succeed_if.so user quiet
…save it, log out and now you can log back into GDM as root.
… can someone PLEASE explain to me how to even do that. I know computers but I don’t know my way around them to the higher degree. It may be simple for some people, but not for me. post back or e-mail me at lcphillips87@yahoo.com
step by step directions would be nice.
lindz206
2009-04-19 at 20:16