Debian 9.0.1.
Very strange issue and I have no idea why no-one else is experiencing this madness. So, I set up my root and user account during installation as per (I have umpteen *NIX systems here!) and went to do some command line stuff just to be greeted by 'not in sudoers file' ..thought fine, I'll just add myself to that.. tried su - nope! Apparently 'su: Authentication failure'. I can bloody well tell you that there's no issue with the password cause it's the damn same password as the user - I always keep the same during the install process!
So yeah, looks like the root account has been disabled. What is this madness? If you are going to disable the root account, at least add my user to the sudo group or I'm stuck like I am now basically locked out my system. I have an encrypted install so it's not easy just remounting the system and going in as root to change things. tbh, I don't have the time nor patience. I'm thus considering just re-installing Debian 9 and giving up in favour of LMDE which I've been using for years.
Anyway, apologies for the tone of this but seriously - what is this nonsense.