set up a root password

[Alan Milnes]

Helpful summary from 
http://www.debianadmin.com/enable-and-disable-ubuntu-root-password.html

To do a one-off admin task in the terminal:
# sudo

To do several admin tasks in the terminal:
# sudo -i (runs the shell environment specified for the root account)
# sudo -s (runs the shell environment for the current user, but with 
root privileges)

For all sudo commands, it is YOUR OWN PASSWORD you should give.

To do an admin task in Gnome:
Press Alt-F2, or in a terminal, enter: gksudo e.g. gksudo gedit /etc/fstab
Again, it is your own password you enter. For any GUI application you 
want to run as root, you should use gksudo not sudo.


Alan