How to start subsequent shells as root?

Question

I run my local testing server inside a VM. I often have to open up multiple windows in it, and all have to be logged in root. Usually this is accomplished by writing su on every tab, a total of 7-8 times.

Is there a way that I have to enter the root password only once, and the next terminal tab/window that I open has be logged in as root? Sort of like it maintains the current working directory?

Answer 1

You'd simply open a terminal emulator as root.

su -l -c gnome-terminal

This will launch the "gnome-terminal" as root. This way, any tab in that terminal emulator will be a root one.

sudo -b gnome-terminal could work better but I do not have an ubuntu to check if it works out of the box.

Answer 2

In a Graphical Session

When you're logged in graphically, you can run your graphical terminal emulator app as root, as others have said. The best way to do this is typically with gksu or gksudo, as this automatically handles changing HOME to /root and (less importantly) uses a temporary .Xauthority file (source). gksu is a frontend for both su and sudo and on most OSes will be configured to use whichever one is the more standard way for administrators to run programs as root. (Or you can specify which one with gksu --su-mode and gksu --sudo-mode, the latter of which is always equivalent to running gksudo without either flag.)

GNOME

gksu gnome-terminal or gksudo gnome-terminal

KDE (uses kdesu or kdesudo instead)

kdesu gnome-terminal or kdesudo gnome-terminal

• Please note that kdesu is usually only present and in the PATH on systems where su is a supported way to run programs as root. That is not the case on some GNU/Linux OSes, such as Ubuntu.

Xfce

gksu xfce4-terminal or gksudo xfce4-terminal

LXDE

gksu lxterminal or gksudo lxterminal

As andcoz and aurelien lambrosse have said, running your graphical terminal emulator as root makes all the shells that come up in its tabs (and new windows, if created from the root terminal's menus) run as root.

In a Text-Based Session

If you don't have the ability to run GUI programs (virtual console login, ssh login without -X, or you just don't want to), the above solution won't work for you. In that case, you might consider using a screen manager that lets you control multiple terminals in one. This effectively achieves the same goal as a root-owned GUI terminal with multiple tabs...just without the GUI.

screen is the most common screen manager. You can use these commands to control it once it's running.

Or use byobu, a handy wrapper for screen. byobu is often not provided on non-Ubuntu systems (though it can be installed on them). But you indicated you're running ubuntu, so you should be able to use it.

^{byobu running on Ubuntu 11.10. Information about the current "window" and the system are shown at the bottom.}

In byobu it's very easy to create new "windows" and to switch between them. F2 makes one, F3 switches backward, F4 switches forward, and F9 brings up the interactive main menu.

There are more default byobu keybindings. Here they are:

F2    Create a new window    |  F7    Scrollback and search
F3    Go to the prev window  |  F8    Rename a window
F4    Go to the next window  |  F9    Configuration
F5    Reload profile         |  F12   Screen escape sequence
F6    Detach from session    |  'man byobu'  - byobu's help
'byobu'  - reattach session  |  'man screen' - screen's help

Source: byobu built-in help, accessible in the F9 configuration menu

See also the documentation on the Ubuntu website for Screen (in the community wiki) and Byobu (in the Server Guide).

Answer 3

you can launch, for example, a gnome-terminal instance as root :

$ sudo gnome-terminal

Then all tabs in this gnome-terminal instance will be open as root