Can't use root in Dolphin

As the title says, i can’t use root in Dolphin, neither by running it with sudo. Wasn’t there a feature where it gave temp root when i move/delete/edit stuff?

You can install kde-servicemenus-rootactions using pacman or your preferred package manager.

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@dalto is right, also you can install Nautilus and launch it from Konsole with root access. I wouldn’t use it very often though.

For root required file management,I use midnight commander in terminal. sudo mc and it’s pretty straight forward. And just leave dolphin as it is.

I installed kde-servicemenus-rootactions seconds ago and still cannot open folders as root with Dolphin. Perhaps later versions of Dolphin disallowed it?

You must right click that specific folder, then in the menu you will see “root actions”

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No, it works just fine in all versions of Dolphin. Clarifying what @TurkeyJohn said open your folder, rightclick a blank spot in it, select Root Actions, Ownership to Active User, then follow the prompts.

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You can’t open folders as root. You can, however, take other actions as root.

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@anon83136962 @dalto Thanks for the info. No wonder the context menu did nothing when I tried to open a folder as root. But other actions worked fine.

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@sosiristseng Also as I stated in another thread yesterday if you have an actual reason to need root ownership of a folder either install Nautilus and run it from terminal using “sudo nautilus”. Now that said I would only use it for the files in the folder you need it for and then close it out. Do not attempt to use it for all you file manager needs while it’s in root mode, way too easy to accidentally mess up things.

Though Plasma devs tried to inhibit execution of certain apps with elevated privileges, all of them are still may by executed as root. These “potentailly dangerous” apps are:

  1. dolphin
  2. konqueror
  3. kate
  4. kwrite
  5. systemsettings5

All of them may be executed as root using pkexec. The syntax is:

pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true dbus-launch [appname]

where [appname] is the name of 5 application above

Example - starting dolphin as root:

pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true dbus-launch dolphin

In some distros the use of dbus-launch is not needed. In such a case the syntax is a bit simpler:

pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true [appname]

If you’re a member of sudo, wheel, another group, and that group is configuraed to execute any command, includig sudo, without askig for password, then dolphin, konqueror, kate, kwrite, systmsettings5 may be prefixed with sudo and started without even asking for password.

The syntax is:

sudo pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true dbus-launch [appname]

Example - starting dolphin as root without being asked for password:

sudo pkexec env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY KDE_SESSION_VERSION=5 KDE_FULL_SESSION=true dbus-launch dolphin

Commands may be used in scripts, aliases, .desktop files, keyboard shortcuts, menu entries, etc. to comfortably execute any of them, without typing them in each time they are needed.

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Hi @just Nice to see you here, it’s been a long time.

Thank you @Bryanpwo. Participation will be reduced to bare minimum though, as I keep Arch as a backbone system only, and recently don’t use it very actively.

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What are you using then? If you don’t mind me asking? :slightly_smiling_face:

I always install nemo when I’m using KDE

I use Dolphin for my daily use, but open up Nemo when I want to do anything that requires root permission

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I’m in Void.

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