[urban]

What's the difference between them?
Who has higher priority?
How do you switch between the two?

Thanks

[Millennium]

As far as Unix is concerned, the "root" user is God. This is the standard one-sentence explanation, I swear. It basically means that the root user can do absolutely anything on the machine, which is a severe double-edged sword.
It should be noted that the name "root" isn't what's important; that name has simply come to be convention. What really matters is that the user's ID number is 0. More than one user can have the same ID, so if you give yourself ID 0 (and I won't say how this is accomplished), you too can be root, without having to change your name.

An admin user is basically a concept new to OSX. Admin users are the same as regular users, except for two things. First, admin users are in a special group which lets them edit /Applications and /Library. Second, admin users can sudo things as root. That means that they can become root for a single command (the machine asks for the user's password first, of course). This is safer than being root all the time, because it helps make sure you don't do something as root that you didn't intend to do as root (or worse, doing something as root that you didn't intend to do at all).

Switching between the two really doesn't happen on OSX. When the machine asks for an admin password, this usually means that it needs to sudo something.

You do not need to log in as root. Period, ever. Trust me on this. Everything you would need to do as root, you can do as an admin by sudoing.

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by Millennium:
As far as Unix is concerned, the "root" user is God. This is the standard one-sentence explanation, I swear. It basically means that the root user can do absolutely anything on the machine, which is a severe double-edged sword.
It should be noted that the name "root" isn't what's important; that name has simply come to be convention. What really matters is that the user's ID number is 0. More than one user can have the same ID, so if you give yourself ID 0 (and I won't say how this is accomplished), you too can be root, without having to change your name.

An admin user is basically a concept new to OSX. Admin users are the same as regular users, except for two things. First, admin users are in a special group which lets them edit /Applications and /Library. Second, admin users can sudo things as root. That means that they can become root for a single command (the machine asks for the user's password first, of course). This is safer than being root all the time, because it helps make sure you don't do something as root that you didn't intend to do as root (or worse, doing something as root that you didn't intend to do at all).

Switching between the two really doesn't happen on OSX. When the machine asks for an admin password, this usually means that it needs to sudo something.

You do not need to log in as root. Period, ever. Trust me on this. Everything you would need to do as root, you can do as an admin by sudoing.

I used to activate the root account, but now I also just sudo things. Much safer, and you always know when you have god-like privileges and when you don't.

(Technical aside - are admin users really new to OS X? Wouldn't they just be the users that are in group wheel?)

[urban]

When ppl say "Log in as root user", what do they really mean?

[chabig]

They usually mean to log in as an admin user. Nobody logs into OS X as root.

The terminology has become corrupted by people who don't understand the difference...just like the term "baud" was corrupted in the modem days to mean bits per second, as in 9600 baud modem.

Chris

[urban]

thanx ppl for the clarification !!!

[xenu]

There is nothing wrong with logging in as root, if you know what you are doing.

I back up multiple users as root. Quick and easy.