[krimsen]

hi!

i'm new to macos, and i need some help from you guys: i opened a terminal and tried to do a "su". i entered the "computer password" which i chose during installation, but it didn't accept it. so i wonder what password is the terminal expecting?

krimsen

[Angus_D]

There is no such thing as a "computer password", the password you entered during installation is your account password.

By default, the root account in OS X is disabled. However, any "admin" user can execute commands as root using the "sudo" command. If you really need an interactive shell, use "sudo -s" but I wouldn't recommend it.

If you really want to enable root, you can do so by "sudo passwd" or from the NetInfo Manager application. See the Mac OS X help for more instructions.

[krimsen]

well, when i installed os x, it asked me to enter a computer password, which i thought to be the equivalent to the root password in unix. obviously, that was something different... but thanks for the reply.

[krimsen]

oh, i forgot, the sudo wants a password as well, and whichever i enter is wrong. i double-checked each password, and they're all correct. i'm pretty sure i have set up my only user account to have admin rights.

[larkost]

sudo is looking for your account password. It is a method of allowing different accounts to have different administrative rights, and can be quite complex. The default unix method of setting up the rights is to allow everyone who is in the 'wheel' group the rights to do everything (that root can do) with a password.

I would check your caps lock key... and ten go into System_Preferences:users, and make sure your user is an admin...

[alphasubzero949]

If you don't understand the difference between sudo and su or know which password is which (hence your usage of "computer password" as opposed to admin and superuser passwords), then you shouldn't bother with those commands.

[Millennium]

The root account in OSX is disabled by default. The "computer password" you're being asked for is the password to the first account, which is an Administrator (write access to /Applications and /Library, plus it can use sudo for anything) but isn't actually root.

You can activate the root account, simply by giving it a password in NetInfo Manager, but I wouldn't recommend doing it. The only times you would ever need to log in as root would be to change the background and screennsaver for the Login screen. Logging in as root for any other purpose does more harm than good; use sudo instead.

[theolein]

Originally posted by krimsen:
oh, i forgot, the sudo wants a password as well, and whichever i enter is wrong. i double-checked each password, and they're all correct. i'm pretty sure i have set up my only user account to have admin rights.

It might be your usage of sudo that's causing the problem (As other have said you don't really need a root account and running as root opens your system to being owned by someone if it ever gets hacked, or trashed by you if you make some bad mistake in the terminal). The way it works is like this:
You enter sudo and then the command you want like this:
CommmandLinePrompt$ sudo command
And then it will ask you for the password you entered when you set your computer up:
password:
You enter the password and bob's your aunty.

A real example, updating the locate database:
CommmandLinePrompt$ sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb (press enter)
password: (enter your user password and press enter)