[DMS Guy]

I purchased my 1.25 Powerbook refurbished from the Apple store. I have to learn my way around UNIX (specifically HP-UX) for work, so I was screwing around with the terminal. It will not accept my password for root access. Is there a default that comes from the factory? Is it possible that the person before me set root and now I'm screwed?

[Mithras]

OS X doesn't have the root account enabled for login by default (i.e. there is no root password per se).

To run things as root, do
sudo command
where command == whatever you want to accomplish

To open a shell as root, do
sudo -s

Depending on your Unix expertise, you might look at
Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther
or
Mac OS X for Unix Geeks

[Earth Mk. II]

There are two ways for gaining superuser (root) access in the terminal:

The safest (and preferred) way for OS X is to use sudo as explained above. Just be sure you're using an administrator account first.

The second way is more likely to be supported on multiple platforms, and that's the switch user command, su.

To use su, you need to have your root account enabled, which you can do from inside NetInfo Manager. Simply type in su at the prompt and enter root's password. This will give you a shell as the superuser.

***NOTE: if you decide to enable the root user, it's generally a good policy to never log into your computer as root (and defiantly never remotely). Rather, log in as your normal admin user and switch to a root shell using sudo or su.

[DMS Guy]

Thank you both very much. I appreciate it!

[Rainy Day]

Originally posted by Earth Mk. II:
To use su, you need to have your root account enabled, which you can do from inside NetInfo Manager. Simply type in su at the prompt and enter root's password. This will give you a shell as the superuser.

There is another way to achieve su without enabling root:

Code:
sudo sudo bash
Password:
bash-2.05a# whoami
root

or

Code:
sudo su
Password:
[Localhost:/Users/me] root# whoami
root

There never really is any reason to enable the root user under MacOS X; i've never needed to yet anyhow.