How to Change Root Password in Ubuntu

The root user (or superuser) is a special user account that is present on all Linux and Unix-like systems. It has full access to every command and any resource on the system without any restrictions.

If you are coming to Ubuntu from another Linux distribution, you may wonder what the default root password is or how to change the root password. By default, in Ubuntu, the root user account is disabled for security reasons.

This tutorial explains how to temporally change to the root user account and how to set the root password on Ubuntu systems.

Temporary Switching to root

Ubuntu users are encouraged to perform system administrative tasks by granting sudo privileges to regular users. Sudo allows authorized users to run programs as another user, usually the root user.

The initial user created by the Ubuntu installer is already a member of the sudo group. The chances are that the user you are logged in as is already granted with administrative privileges.

To temporarily elevate root user privileges, run the command prefixed with sudo:

sudo command-name

The first time you use sudo in a session, you will be prompted to enter the user password. To temporally switch to the root account in the current login session, you can use either the sudo su or sudo -i command and enter the user password:

sudo su -

Run the whoami command to verify that the user is changed:

whoami
 
#Output
root

Changing Root Password

The root user is disabled, but that doesn’t mean that the root account has been removed. Logging in as root is not possible because no password has been set for the root account. If for some reason, you need to enable the root account, all you need to do is to set a password for the root user. In Ubuntu, you can set or change the password of a user account with the passwd command.

To change the password of the root user in Ubuntu, run the following command as a sudo user:

sudo passwd root
 
#Output
Enter new UNIX password: ******
Retype new UNIX password: ******
passwd: password updated successfully

That’s it! The root password has been changed.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. 🙂