su in osx

[pins]

got hold of a mac with osx on (someone was going to bin it!). I know that the way that apple have it setup up is that theres not really a root user (they refer to root as being the system in the dox I read), but I opened a terminal and typed su and it asked for a password. I tried mine, I tried that of the computers previous owner, to no avail. Any ideas, anyone?

[pins]

ok. answered my own question: for those that may be interested:

The root user is enabled in the NetInfo Manager utility, found in
Applications/Utilities. After launching NetInfo Manager, choose
"Authenticate..." from the Security menu, and enter an administrator's
username and password. (The first user created on a Mac OS X
installation has administrator privileges by default.) Then, select
"Enable Root User", also from the Security menu. You will be prompted
to set a root password, which may be the same as or different from
your own password, at your preference

[Lejon]

*shivers*

[Nigel]

...The first user created on a Mac OS X
installation has administrator privileges by default...

It's not quite the same as Administrator privileges in Windows or root privilege in Linux/Unix... rather, the first user is automatically added to the sudo list. When you want to do anything administrator-ish you are prompted for the username and password of an administrator - even if you are logged in as that user at the time. If you want a root terminal you can open a normal terminal and enter the command

Code: Select all

sudo bash

and you're prompted for your password just like in Ubuntu (or other Linux systems).

So they do try to make it difficult for you to bork your system