Take the 2-minute tour ×

Whilst I was installing Linux Mint... I created a user profile.. then after the installation was complete I tried installing NASM but after executing the make install command it failed to create directory and a error message "failed to create directory... Permission denied" appeared.

I logged out of my account typed in root in the login screen and the system booted into the root user...after this the make install command worked and the installation was successful. So why wasn't the user created during install not the root user?

share|improve this question
add comment

closed as primarily opinion-based by techie007, Tog, Breakthrough, Scott, Dave M Sep 9 '13 at 23:33


2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Because it's generally considered a bad idea to run everything as Root. Since Mint is aimed at end-users and to be "easy to use", they decide this for you.

share|improve this answer
Oww. Thanks. Well is there any way to change that ? Or do I have to always log into the root to make changes to the system ? –  OK_sr Sep 3 '13 at 20:37
add comment

To become root temporarily and execute commands with higher privileges, you should use the sudo command. In Ubuntu and Mint, the access to the sudo command is restricted on a group-membership basis. Usually, your default user should be member of the admin (pre-12.04) or sudo (since 12.04) group. You can check the group membership with the following command on the console:

grep sudo /etc/group


grep admin /etc/group

If the resulting line contains your user name, you should be able to use sudo without further modifications.

Important: don't use "plain" sudo to run GUI applications as root. To run GUI applications, use the gksudo or kdesudo command (or sudo -H).

share|improve this answer
add comment
