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Is there a root password on OS X and Ubuntu?

After I installed Ubuntu, I noticed that I'm not sure what was superuser password set, If I set it at all. I know that I created a user via which I'm logging in. But when I write su command the password for the user I created does not work.

Does it mean that superuser is the one user I created and I can use sudo xralf to gain superuser privileges? Is there some material on this topic. I'm still little confused how this works in Linux.

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marked as duplicate by Michael Mrozek♦ Dec 5 '11 at 15:39

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In a regular Ubuntu install, you never explicitly set the root user password. You can still however su to root easily by typing sudo su - in a console when logged in as the first regular user you created (which has sudo privileges).

I presume that the password is set to something random and unknown to any human, for security reasons, although this always seemed a bit strange as compared to other distros where you do set a password for root before even creating any other users.

---edit---

As per Kevin's answer, the password is not random as I had suspected, but initially disabled (follow the link in his answer for further details).

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Not random, as I mentioned it's disabled entirely. – Kevin Dec 5 '11 at 15:50
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you can if you like enable the root account with sudo passwd – shutupsquare Dec 5 '11 at 16:13
@Kevin edited answer to aknowledge this – Dalker Dec 5 '11 at 16:18
up vote 4 down vote

On a default Ubuntu install, the root account is locked, which is implemented by storing into the password hash field a value that cannot be a legal hash. See more details here: Is there a root password on OS X and Ubuntu?

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You can flag a question to be closed as a duplicate when this happens. "flag -> it doesn't belong here (which makes no sense in this case, but oh well) -> exact duplicate" – Michael Mrozek♦ Dec 5 '11 at 15:39
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Iirc in ubuntu 10.04 I could do:

sudo /bin/sh
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