Fortunately, there are a few ways around this.

The first is to use a super user shell. From a terminal or console, type:
sudo bash
This will give you a shell with full root access, and save you needlessly typing ‘sudo’. (You can, of course, use other shell flavours, like zsh or csh if you prefer.)

A similar method is to run the ‘su’ command with sudo, thusly:
sudo su
which will also give you a shell with full root access, according to root’s preferred shell.

The third method is to alter the password protecting the root account. To do this, from a terminal or console, type:
sudo passwd root
and enter a password for the root user. Now you will be able to log on to consoles (and, if you’re that way inclined, X sessions) as root.