root password of Fedora-18-Alpha-TC3

[Adam Williamson]

On 2012-08-30 11:22, Sérgio Basto wrote:
> Hi,
> After many work, I install Fedora-18-Alpha-TC3  in VirtualBox , but I
> don't have root password , don't remember ask me for that .
> this is correct ?

There isn't exactly a 'yes' or 'no' answer to that question, it's a bit 
complicated. The original design was for there to be no root password 
set: the idea is to use an Ubuntu-style model where the first created 
user is an 'admin user' who can perform all admin tasks - they can do 
admin tasks in apps that use PolicyKit by entering their own password 
rather than root's, and from the console they can run anything root-y 
via sudo with their own password. This system is actually already 
available - if you check the 'admin user' checkbox in firstboot when 
creating a user, all of the above is put in place.

However, there are some holes in the plan. firstboot doesn't enforce 
creation of an an admin user, which it probably should in this design, 
and more importantly, there's no firstboot for non-graphical installs, 
so you need to be able to create a root password in that case, or else 
you'll be entirely unable to log in to the installed system without some 
kind of rescue operation (as root has no password and there are no user 
accounts):

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=849250

The short-term plan for Alpha is that there will be a root password 
'spoke' in anaconda. It's optional, because making it mandatory would be 
tricky and not really fit into the new anaconda design. This should be 
implemented for TC4. This is just the easiest short-term solution, 
though, and anaconda team may come up with something different 
(hopefully, better...) for Beta / Final.

(Of course, as in Ubuntu, if you don't like the model and want to stick 
with the old-school system instead, you can just do 'sudo passwd' to set 
a password for the root user and take your user out of the 'wheel' group 
so it can't use sudo any more, though I don't know a one-command way to 
make your user a non-admin user for PolicyKit, hence causing it to ask 
you for the root password rather than your own for admin operations).
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net