You got a Mac running on Leopard (probably out of the box). You created your account, add in some personal info, and an admin password. Later in life (8 hours gap), you would open your terminal and simply type “su -” for purposes of i dunno, just root stuff. This reminds you, “Did i ever had one? I don’t recall any root password.” *did i mention this was me?*
Well to let you off the hook (the first 30 seconds in forgetfulness limbo and the next minute in regression), it’s not enabled by default. Here’s how to go about enabling root.
- Go to: Applications -> Utilities -> Directory Utility
- (Be sure to click the padlock to allow you to perform edits.)
- Click Edit -> Enable Root Password
- Type a new password and retype to confirm.
Monday, 8 Sep 08 at 06:10:44 am
Thank you for this great practical knowledge. It was very helpful to me, since I’m a native linux user, and now I’m trying to get used to my new Mac. One of the first things I had to do was to go into the terminal and start looking around, but I realized that I need root priviliges… and I was okay let’s ’su’, but bam! I couldn’t, this a google search and this came up. Great! Thanks.
Thursday, 20 Nov 08 at 05:38:54 am
sudo passwd root doesn’t work ?
Wednesday, 7 Jan 09 at 10:40:04 pm
or why not just “sudo su -” and use your own password
Friday, 13 Mar 09 at 02:33:18 am
Thanks a million Man! Leopard was a huge step back. People coming from Linux and using X11 are really left alone by Apple, its a shame.
Tuesday, 16 Jun 09 at 05:50:40 am
Nonsense. Leopard is a very nice OS with a lot of improvements over Tiger, and the Mac OS X desktop puts Linux and X11 desktops to shame.
Just because something is new and it is unfamiliar to you and forces you to learn and think and do a few things differently doesn’t make it ‘a huge step back’. So many improvements in Leopard I can’t count them all. So much integration that makes Linux look hokey by comparison for the average end user. And Leopard has very easy-to-configure NFS, an improvement over Tiger.
Monday, 22 Jun 09 at 10:29:37 pm
repeat- sudo passwd root does not work.