su command + authentication failure

su asks for the root password. Since Ubuntu doesn't set a root password by default, you can't use it to become root.

Instead, to become root, use sudo -i with your personal password.

su asks for the password of the account you're trying to login. It's usage (simplified):

su username

When omitting username, the username default to root. Since the root password is disabled by default on Ubuntu, no password will be valid. The preferred way to run root commands is not through a su shell, but with sudo as in:

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

The root account in Ubuntu is disabled by default. This is to say that it has no password (which is different from it having a blank password) and no attempt to authenticate with root's password will succeed. Therefore, su or su - will not work.

Instead, use sudo to run a command as root:

sudo command...

If you want a root shell like you get with su, run:

sudo -s

If you want a root shell like you get with su -, run:

sudo -i