What does “are you root?” mean

aptcommand lineroot

This is what I keep getting:

ascendermedia@magic2tower:~$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer
bash: sudo: command not found
ascendermedia@magic2tower:~$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer
bash: sudo: command not found
ascendermedia@magic2tower:~$ apt-get install flashplugin-installer
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
ascendermedia@magic2tower:~$ sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree
bash: sudo: command not found
ascendermedia@magic2tower:~$ aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
ascendermedia@magic2tower:~$

What am I doing wrong?

Best Answer

root is the superuser account on the system — it (basically) has all privileges. Many systems are configured so that you can use the sudo command in front of another command to run that command "as root" — that is, as if you are the root user, with the same privileges.

It is usually the case that you need root privileges to install system packages, which is what apt-get does. So, it doesn't work, the first time because you don't have sudo available; the second time because sudo didn't magically appear just because you ran it twice; and the third (and fifth) times because apt-get (and aptitude) really do require root privs to install packages like this.

As you see from your first error message, sudo is either not installed or not in your path, and probably not configured. You may be able to substitute su -c instead, and give the root password (the password for the root account) when prompted.

If you don't know that password, you need to a) ask the person who does to perform this task for you, if it is not your system, or b) find some way to recover it.

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