How to run applications as root?

Solution 1:

It is pretty simple to run a program as root.

For a console program use

sudo <program name>

If it is a GUI application use

gksudo <program name>

Solution 2:

UNIX-like operating systems (including Linux) use a concept called privilege separation to ensure that the system stays safe. UNIX was designed as a multi-user system from the ground up - that is, it was designed so that many people could use one computer running UNIX at once. Because most users don't need to be able to modify the core system only the system administrator should have that privilege. That privileged user is traditionally called root. (Root is a lot like Administrator in Windows.)

This makes sense on several levels. Commonly, a web server or other process that exposes a port to other (possibly malicious) computers will run as its own user (Apache runs as the user nobody), so that even if the web server program is hacked, the attacker can't trash the entire machine quite so easily. It even makes sense for mostly single-user machines such as desktops: if other members of your family, for example, somehow manage to run rm -rf / (do NOT run that), they won't have permission to delete every file on the system, like they would if there were no such thing as privilege separation.

There are several commands you can use to elevate your privileges. The sudo command exists to temporarily give you root-level privileges when you need them to administer the system. You can also use the commands gksudo or su. The latter can be used only if you know root's password and is a good option if your account doesn't have permission to use sudo.

The root user can do anything on a system, with almost no exceptions. So even if you request something by accident, it will be carried out with little or no warning, even if it's bad for the health of your system. This is why it's good practice to do most of your activities as a normal user, and use root only when needed, like when you're installing a program.

You shouldn't need to use root to get rid of a segmentation fault. If root is the only thing that fixes a segfault, then the program has a bug. Programs should not fail like that just because they don't have root.

Solution 3:

In addition to the previous answer, which says about sudo and gksudo, yes, it is definitely a bad practice to run a program as root unless this is an administrative one.

Please try to find you why the programs are crashing. Please seek help of others if you need to.

Solution 4:

You can also go to /usr/share/applications in ubuntu and edit the launch file of the application you are trying to run.
Like i edited the file of github atom, normally i use a wildcard to find the files like this

sudo nano atom*

This will open the atom.desktop file, now find the Exec command and prepend gksudo.For eg.,

Before

Exec=/usr/share/atom/atom %U  

After

Exec=gksudo -k -u root /usr/share/atom/atom %U

Now whenever the application is launched it will ask for root password.