How to to root jobs on a non-root user-account?

[DeMus]

Hi,
I have added a second user account for my wife on our laptop. Plan was to keep it a simple user-account so she can do what she wants to do without messing up the whole system.
Soon after the account was created I needed to do something which needed root access. In the terminal I saw the line asking for a password, my wife's password. But this account is not in the sudoers file so it didn't work. Typing my password didn't do the trick either.
How do I perform a root job on a non root account?

[oshunluvr]

There are several of ways to fix this; add your wife to the admin group (she still won't have the admin password), log in as yourself via New Session and log out when done, open a terminal and log in as your self via su <USERNAME> , go to a TTY terminal with CRTL-ALT-F1 and log in...

Which way is best depends on if you need the GUI or not.

[kubicle]

There are several of ways to fix this; add your wife to the admin group (she still won't have the admin password)

Sudo by default, asks for the calling user's password, there's no "admin password". This is configurable (via sudoers), but if you simply add an account to admin group, that user will be able to use sudo with his/her own password (which sort of defeats the purpose of a non-admin account)

[oshunluvr]

Oh yeah, good point... </Wiping egg off face>

[DeMus]

Thing is I don't like to have her doing root things on the computer, that's my job. So, which options are there left when she is logged in and I have to install something for her, or do any other job which requires root privileges?

[kubicle]

Thing is I don't like to have her doing root things on the computer, that's my job. So, which options are there left when she is logged in and I have to install something for her, or do any other job which requires root privileges?

Like oshunluvr suggested, you can su into your admin account (which will be able to use sudo/kdesudo) to run things as root (it is usually the simplest/fastest way).
$ su admin_username
$ sudo/kdesudo application