Can't login using root account

Question

I have Ubuntu installed on VMware on the shell screen I couldn't login with the Username: root and Password I was asked to login with is there a way around this?

Answer 1

Because of the tty tag you are using, I consider you just want to use root in tty and not GUI.

While installing you have created a regular user account which is able to use sudo command. in tty login using that user account. then to use root access for running commands use the sudo command:

sudo command-to-run

Remember when running sudo, it will asks for your account password, not root.

If you want to switch to root account you can also use sudo:

sudo -i

or

sudo -s

or even:

sudo su -

You can also select an specific shell to run, like this:

sudo -i /bin/zsh

Enabling root

If you want enable root account, so you are able to login using its credentials:

use one of above solutions to run passwd command to set a password for root account. E.g:

sudo passwd

then it will asks you for a new password. Also use sudo passwd -u root to make sure root account is unlocked now.

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If you don't have any other user account to follow above instructions which is weired, use this solution to active your root account.