I could just do it the easy way and go to app manager where everything works fine....

... But, I want to try and get to grips with the terminal.

I opened up X-Term and then I entered the following:
I was then prompted for a password.

This confuses me because as far as I am aware I havn't set any passwords. Also, when I did try to enter a couple of passwords the cursor did not move as I typed the letters to indicate it was actually inputting what I had typed.

Is there some kind of default password? what do I need to do? and why? - I dont need any passwords in the app manager, so why should I need one here?

The only command you need to run with sudo is:

"sudo gainroot"

Then run everything as root. After running that you just do "apt-get install Attitude", for example.

The password prompted would normally be your "user" account password, by default there isn't one and sudo won't work. Sudo is not configured, by default, to allow you to run *any* command without a password. Sudo gainroot is the exception.

PS: Unix never shows passwords being typed. It's a security enhancement so shoulder lookers can't see how many *'s your password is. You will get no indication you are typing a password in a *nix terminal.

Thank you buddy

I also have a question regarding this issu.

When I open terminal and I want to install a .deb using the dpkg -i nameoffile.deb
it say requested operation requires superuser privilege ?? how do we bypass that?

humpff... next question

I tried the above with he sudo gainroot, and this is what i get:

home/user # apt-get install Attitude
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package Attitude
/home/user #


So how do I tell it where to look for an app?

You need to sudo gainroot first

Make sure you have the correct Application Catalogs and make sure package name is correct. Thats it if the package is there it will find it and install it.

1. use command root or sudo gainroot (you will need rootsh package)
2. Check correct name of application by command:
apt-cache search attitude (or any keywords)
If program wasn't found than check repositories which you use
3. install by command
apt-get install attitude

P.S in linux capital and not capital is different. "attitude" not equal to "Attitude"

I was under the impression that i had the correct "application catalogs" as that particular application shows up when i go to app manager. The spelling, including upper and lower case is correct too.

Im not particularly bothered about specifically downloading "Attitude" i just picked a nice small one from the list in extras.

If merely having the required repo active on my device is not enough, whats the next step?

One more thing:
in maemo (I don't know why) some times commands:
1. sudo something
and
1. root (or sudo gainroot)
2. something
will give you different results. some commands will not be executed completely by: sudo command. But they normally work under root conrol