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prab4th
Asked: 2018-09-06 07:11:07 +0800 CST

How to switch to gain root privileges in Nautilus file browser by typing in the addressbar in GUI while it's being used

  • 772

I saw in a reddit comment that it was possible to switch to root user in nautilus file browser by just typing in a series of forward slashes and colons. I've since forgotten the sequence and searching the internet did not return any answers.

Is there an actual way to do that?

nautilus gui gvfs 18.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You may want to use the GVfs admin backend, just add admin:// to the beginning of the full path to your preferred directory.

    Open Nautilus the usual way and press Ctrl+L to enable typing in the address-bar, and then enter for example admin:///usr/ to open the /usr/ directory.

    enter image description here

    Alternatively, launch Terminal and run 

    nautilus admin:///

    to open the / directory or 

    nautilus admin:///usr/

    to open the /usr/ directory etc.

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  2. You can go to the root folder / and double click the folder called root. Then, write your password two times and you'll get into the root folder. Then you can see / at the top of the screen. Click at that and now you are in a root instance of Nautilus.

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