How to enable root permission, not done during install?

[undyinglight]

I just installed Debian 9 XFCE on my Lenovo Thinkpad 13 Chromebook using Crouton.

https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

The installation process with crouton is different than the normal way, crouton does almost everything for you. The only prompts I was given was to enter a username and enter a password. It seems to have installed Debian just fine as far as I am aware. To start Debian I need to open a terminal on my chromebook CTRL+ALT+T and then type in 'shell' enter, then 'sudo startxfce4' I started following this youtube tutorial on things to do after installing Debian and I hit a snag on step 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWBHJmAmZgk

If I type in 'su' I get 'su: Authentication failure' I figured that this was coming from the alternate install issue that I did with crouton compared to the normal way for a desktop or a laptop. I saw that you typically set up root when first installing Debian in these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjjj_Me_jdo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWBHJmAmZgk

I googled around to see if any other crouton users were having the same issue as me, I think I found someone stating that they have the same issue as me and the creator of crouton answering him:

https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/issues/243

Despite having read this I was still confused with how to go about the solution that was stated. I was unsure if I was supposed to type in 'sudo enter-chroot -u root' in the chromebook terminal or in the debian terminal. I think it is in the chromebook terminal so I can open up a Debian session as root. Is that correct? At that point he says to install sudo. How do I install sudo once I am in Debian as root?

Thank you so much for your help, if anyone needs further elaboration or needs screenshots of my terminal I can provide those. Thank you.

[sunrat]

Assuming you have an internet connection:

Code: Select all

apt update && apt install sudo

You should read some docs about package management in Debian, the wiki is a good start.
Also, Chromebooks are strange. If you used Crouton, you should use their support channels as it's not the same as Debian. Normally in Debian you should absolutely NOT start your desktop as root.

PS. no-one really wants to see terminal screenshots or videos if it can be avoided.

[kevinthefixer]

Support for a Debian installation via Crouton is going to be patchy at best, it's a chroot environment using the ChromeOS kernel and so not truly Debian. Depending on what you want to do as root, the ChromeOS kernel may well block it anyway--in that way, Crouton resembles a sandbox environment, you can play with Debian but you can't do anything that might compromise ChromeOS. But you might try sudo, the installer may have enabled that and not installed su at all.