sudo won't work.

[lurk]

I wonder if there is a little confusion here that is making things much more complicated than they need to be. When you use sudo to do a root thing you need to use your user password. This is in contrast to the way one uses su where you would have entered the the root password.

It would be a good idea to disable the root password you enabled as it is an added security issue. Not a big one but one nonetheless.