sudo - am I missing something here?

[joshb]

Admittedly, I'm new to the VPS world, so I'm hoping that I'm just missing something obvious.

Logged in to my new VPS via SSH, and I'm trying to use sudo to execute some simple commands as root. However, it's not accepting my password for root.

That is, I'm able to SSH in directly as root, but when I SSH in as a client and try to use the root password with the sudo command, it doesn't accept it. Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Josh

[Ron]

try "man sudoers"

[joshb]

Quick answer: yes, I was missing something. Funny how checking the MAN page for SUDO helps to understand what's going on.

For those of you reading this that didn't know the answer: running 'su' asks you to authenticate with the root password. 'sudo' asks you for YOUR password, and then checks the 'sudoers' file to see if you have the privileges to execute the command.

D'oh!

PS I checked the MAN page before Ron told me to.