By default, the root account password is locked in Ubuntu - Canonical neither supports nor advocates enabling the root account. This means that you cannot login as root directly or use the su command to become the root user. However, since the root account physically exists it is still possible to run programs with root-level privileges.

OK it was my fault! There I've said it and its true. I broke one of the rules for Ubuntu Linux which basically said "Thou shalt not use the upgrade feature in Synaptic."

More than once we have felt the need for multiple accounts with root like privileges and it is really painful to understand and modify sudo for this simple purpose. It is not a unique issue, especially new users who have just migrated from the world of Windows. We are so used to administrative and debugger privileges.

The consensus among new Unix and Linux users seems to be that sudo is more secure than using the root account, because it requires you type your password to perform potentially harmful actions. In reality, a compromised user account, which is no big deal normally, is instantly root in most setups.

There’s a disturbing trend that I’ve been running into everywhere for a while now. I’m talking about the tendency of developers committing the cardinal sin of software: Thou shalt not release a new version that has fewer features than the previous version.

Sudo which is su “do” allows a system administrator to delegate authority to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands as root or another user while providing an audit trail of the commands and their arguments.sudo allows a permitted user to execute a command as the superuser or another user, as specified in the sudoers file.

Flawed sudo code allows users with limited privileges to obtain root privileges

In Ubuntu gksu and sudo can be hijacked by an attacker who already has access to the current non-administrative account.

What if you want one user to run a command as an another system user without exchanging passwords. For example, you may want an user john to run a find command or custom bash shell script as an user greg or even as a user root ( superuser ) without password exchange. In this case a sudo utility with its /etc/sudoers configuration file will be your friend.