ubuntu - how can I avoid typing a password on every admin action?

I just set-up ubuntu 9.10 on my computer, and I'm trying to figure out how to avoid typing a password on every action that requires sudo privileges. I just want to type a password once on login and have all rights throughout my session. Also, I'd rather not login as root, but using my own username and settings. Thanks.

From serverfault sa125

• Set a root password, use 'su' :)

  sa125 : not sure I follow.. Also I was talking about performing actions in terminal as well as gnome-desktop env - sorry if I wasn't clear about that :)

  grawity : `gksu` used by GNOME does have the ability to switch between 'sudo' and 'su' modes, if you aren't afraid of `gconf-editor`

  pehrs : Generally a bad habit to work using the root account. sudo is there for a reason.

  Michael Graff : sudo is there for a reason, certainly. It's there so you can set the NOPASSWD option and remove all traces of security. Seeing a root prompt should make you think. It's amazing how fast people just type 'sudo' and fail to realize it, it becomes natural and just something the fingers do. sudo is no more secure or no less secure in the real world, if you allow sudo to issue any command. In restricted environments it is useful again perhaps.
  From Michael Graff

• You can edit your sudo config file and add the NOPASSWD where appropriate. See the man page (man sudoers) or one of the many online copies (like this one) for more detail.

  The config file is usually /etc/sudoers but it is safer to use the visudo command (see man visudo) as this performs some sanity checks before committing the changed file, reducing the chance of accidentally breaking the sudo config.

  From David Spillett

• sudo visudo and add the following line:

  MYUSERNAME ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

  replacing MYUSERNAME with your username :)

  This allows your user account to sudo any command without requiring a password. Note that there are inherent security risks with this though - for example if someone can persuade you to run a script, that script could sudo and do things as root without you noticing. It is convenient though.

  From Richard

• You can set timestamp_timeout in the sudoers file (sudo visudo to edit) to a longer value or a negative value (which will make it not expire).

  From man sudoers:

  timestamp_timeout
                         Number of minutes that can elapse before sudo will ask
                         for a passwd again.  The default is 15.  Set this to 0
                         to always prompt for a password.  If set to a value
                         less than 0 the user's timestamp will never expire.
                         This can be used to allow users to create or delete
                         their own timestamps via sudo -v and sudo -k
                         respectively.
  

  From Dennis Williamson

• Install windows xp

  From loco