Archives For November 30, 1999

Want to open folder or edit file as administrator (aka root in Linux)? Here’s how to do the trick by adding menu option in Ubuntu 22.04 file manager.

The ‘Files’ (aka nautilus) has an extension called nautilus-admin to do administrative operations. With it, you may right-click on folder and select “Open as Administrator“, or right-click on file and select “Edit as Administrator“.

Don’t like MS Windows, it however does not support running an app as root.

1. Open Terminal

Firstly, open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T key combination on keyboard, or by searching from the ‘Activities’ overview screen.

2. Install nautilus-admin

When the terminal opens, paste the command below into it and hit Enter.

sudo apt install nautilus-admin

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo authentication and hit Enter to continue.

3. Apply change

Once installed the extension, you need to restart the file manager to apply change.

Not just close and re-open the file manager window, but you need to run command to quit the background service and let it start again automatically:

nautilus -q

That’s all. Enjoy!

This simple tutorial shows how to add ‘Open as Administrator‘ option to file browser right-click menu in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Need to open or edit files with Administrator (root) user privilege directly from file browser in Ubuntu desktop? There’s an extension nautilus-admin can do the job in the default Gnome desktop.

1. Open terminal by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or searching for ‘terminal’ from application menu.

2. When terminal opens, run command to install the extension:

sudo apt install nautilus-admin

You may replace nautilus-admin with caja-admin or peony-admin if you’re running with MATE or UKUI desktop.

Once installed, run command nautilus -q or log out and back in to apply changes.

Note the extension only adds Administrator privilege to open folders or edit files. There’s no ‘Run as Administrator’ option to run program as super user privilege.

This tutorial shows beginners how to add ‘Open as Administrator’ option in Nautilus file browser context menu (right-click menu) in Ubuntu 19.10.

Want to open a file folder and/or edit a file via root user account? Without running Linux command, you can do this by adding ‘Open as Administrator‘ or ‘Edit as Administrator‘ right-click menu option via nautilus-admin extension.

1.) The nautilus-admin package is available in Ubuntu universe repository. Simply open terminal either from application menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard.

When terminal opens, run command to install it:

sudo apt install nautilus-admin

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo prompt and hit Enter.

2.) Once installed the extension, restart Nautilus file browser via command:

nautilus -q

Next time you open the file browser, you’ll see ‘Open as Administrator‘ context menu option for file folders, and ‘Edit as Administrator‘ option for documents.

That’s it. Enjoy!

Enable “Open as Admin” in Nautilus File Browser

Last updated: February 15, 2018

It’s been a long time last time I wrote about how to enable “Open as root” or “Open as Administrator” in Nautilus’ context menu.

A Nautilus extension called Nautilus Admin has been created for a period of time. It’s a simply Python script that adds some administrative actions to the right-click menu:

  • Open as Administrator: opens a folder in a new Nautilus window running with administrator (root) privileges.
  • Edit as Administrator: opens a file in a Gedit window running with administrator (root) privileges.

To install the Nautilus extension:

The extension is available for all current Ubuntu releases: Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.10, and Ubuntu 18.04.

1. Simply open “Terminal” either via Ctrl+Alt+T or from app launcher. Then run command:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-admin

Input your password (no visual feedback while typing) when it prompts and hit Enter.

2. Then restart Nautilus via command:

nautilus -q

That’s it. Open nautilus file browser again and enjoy with new context menu options!

 

This simple tutorial will show you how to add ‘Open As Root’ or ‘Open As Administrator’ option to context menu so that you can easily edit / open file folders as super user privilege within Nautilus file browser.

To get started:

1. Open Ubuntu Software Center. Search for and make sure the package gksu is installed. gksu allows graphical programs to ask a user’s password to run program as root / administrator.

2. Open Nautilus file browser, press Ctrl+H to view hidden files & folders. Navigate to USER Home -> .local -> share -> nautilus -> scripts.

Create an empty document under this directory named ‘open-as-administrator’ or ‘open-as-root’

3. Edit and paste following lines into the file

#!/bin/bash
#
# this code will determine exactly the path and the type of object,
# then it will decide use gedit or nautilus to open it by ROOT permission
#
# Determine the path
if [ -e -n $1 ]; then
obj="$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS"
else
base="`echo $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI | cut -d'/' -f3- | sed 's/%20/ /g'`"
obj="$base/${1##*/}"
fi
# Determine the type and run as ROOT
if [ -f "$obj" ]; then
gksu gedit "$obj"
elif [ -d "$obj" ]; then
gksu nautilus "$obj"
fi

exit 0

4. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open the terminal. When it opens, run the command below to make executable:

cd .local/share/nautilus/scripts/ && chmod 0755 open-as-administrator

5. Finally restart Nautilus via command nautilus -q, or just log out and back in.

This simple tutorial will show you how to add ‘Open as Administrator’ or ‘Open as root’ to Pantheon Context menu in Elementary OS Luna. So that you can easily open system files or folders with super user privilege through the default Pantheon file browser.

First take a look at the screenshots:

open file as root in elementary os

open folder as root in elementary os

Before getting started, search for and install gksu from Software Center. It is a Gtk+ frontend allows graphical programs to ask a user’s password to run another program as root / administrator.

Open files as root in Panthen Context Menu:

It’s a little different to Ubuntu Nautilus. Because I don’t know how to use if conditional statements in ‘.contractor’ files, so I divided this into two parts: Open files as root and Open folders as root.

1. Use your favorite editor to create and edit the config file. Here I use gedit (press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal for running commands):

sudo apt-get install gedit

sudo gedit /usr/share/contractor/scratch-openasroot.contract

2. Copy and paste below lines into the file and save it.

[Contractor Entry]
Name=Open file as root
Icon=scratch-text-editor
Description=open file as root with scratch
MimeType=text
Exec=gksudo scratch-text-editor %U
Gettext-Domain=scratch-text-editor

This will add an option “Open file as root” to Pantheon context menu, which open text files as root user with Scratch Text Editor (the default editor for eOS).

Open folders as root in Panthen Context Menu:

1. Use your favorite editor to create and edit the config file:

sudo gedit /usr/share/contractor/folder-openasroot.contract

2. Copy and paste below lines into the file and save it.

[Contractor Entry]
Name=Open folder as root
Icon=pantheon-files
Description=Open current folder as root privilege
MimeType=inode;
Exec=gksudo pantheon-files %U
Gettext-Domain=pantheon-files

This adds the option ‘Open folder as root’ to context menu, which open folders as root privilege.

Remember, you need a restart to get things done. Enjoy!

This quick tip is going to show beginners how to add ‘open as administrator’ or ‘open as root’ into Nautilus context menu in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy.

With this feature enabled, you can quickly open files and folders in Nautilus with root (super user) privilege. This also works on Linux Mint 16 Petra if you’re using Nautilus 3.8.x.

To get started:

1. Open Ubuntu Software Center, search for and install gksu. It allows graphical programs to ask a user’s password to run program as root / administrator.

2. Open Nautilus file browser, press Ctrl+H to view hidden files & folders. Navigate to USER Home -> .local -> share -> nautilus -> scripts.

Create an empty document under this directory named ‘open-as-administrator’

3. Open this file with Gedit, copy and paste following codes into the file and save.

#!/bin/bash
#
# this code will determine exactly the path and the type of object,
# then it will decide use gedit or nautilus to open it by ROOT permission
#
# Determine the path
if [ -e -n $1 ]; then
obj="$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS"
else
base="`echo $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI | cut -d'/' -f3- | sed 's/%20/ /g'`"
obj="$base/${1##*/}"
fi
# Determine the type and run as ROOT
if [ -f "$obj" ]; then
gksu gedit "$obj"
elif [ -d "$obj" ]; then
gksu nautilus "$obj"
fi

exit 0

4. Right-click on this file, go to Properties -> Permissions tab. Check the box which says ‘Allow executing file as program’.

Log out and back in, or restart Nautilus by nautilus -q command. Done.