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On 30/03/17 19:14, Brad Rogers via list wrote: > you may not even have a root user I don't know where you've got all this weird idea from... Unless you're running Plan9 I promise you that your *nix based system *definitely* has an entity called "root" with UID=0. Just try removing the root user from your PC and see what happens (please don't actually do this!). Lots of (most?) modern distros do indeed setup the intial user with access to the sudo/wheel/admin group as required and full sudo permissions and randomly scramble the root password. There's nothing wrong with that until your system breaks and you're dropped at the dreaded: Give root password for maintenance (or type Control D to continue) Without knowing your own root password you're going to be reduced to live booting and chrooting into your own system to fix it. It's not a good idea to not know your own root password on a system you own. Specify it manually with "sudo passwd root" if you don't know it, and keep it safe for Just In Case scenarios. More hands-on systems (all BSDs, Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, etc) all require you to set a root password during install, as does good old fashioned Debian of course. To answer an earlier question as well, Linux full disk encryption does indeed transparently encrypt/decrypt all files on the fly for you, no intervention needed. Outside of servers in racks, there's not really any reason to NOT have it on any Linux PC that isn't bolted down these days, including home PCs and definitely anything portable (read: nickable). Performance overhead is virtually non-existent, even on prehistoric hardware like netbooks or creaky old Macs. Cheers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq