Using Nautilus as a super user in Ubuntu 10.04

Of course, regardless of the amount of time you spend writing something, the instant you finish it and make it available for public viewing, you’ll find a problem. Or three. My last post, “Ubuntu 10.04: A first look”, contained a few issues I didn’t see until after hitting the publish button. And don’t get me started about the typo in the freakin’ title.

When mentioning the new features with GNOME’s file manager, Nautilus, I wrote:

I only wish it allowed you to sudo from within the application.

So, it turns out you can, but not by using sudo, but gksudo, which is basically sudo for GUI applications. You get a root-privileged file browser by executing the following in a terminal:

gksudo nautilus

Granted, it’s a pain to start a terminal every time you want to browse as root, but there’s a solution for that too. In the System -> Preference menu, there is an application called ‘Main Menu’ that allows you to modify, or add items to, the system menu.

The Main Menu window

After starting Main Menu, you’ll see the window above. Click the ‘New Item’ button as shown below to create the menu that I decided to call ’sudo nautilus’.

The New Menu Item properties window

I chose to put the menu in the ‘Accessories’ menu, but you can put it in any other menu by selecting the menu of your choice prior to clicking the ‘New Item’ button.