Curbing Your Power: SuperuserrootAdministrator Access


Curbing Your Power: Superuser/root/Administrator Access

While you are logged in as the user named root, you are referred to as Superuser or administrator and have extraordinary privileges. You can read from or write to any file on the system, execute programs that ordinary users cannot, and more. By default the root account is disabled (it has no password). Standard practice is to use sudo (page 431) to perform tasks that require root privileges.

On a multiuser system on which the root account has been enabled, you may not be permitted to know the root password, but someoneusually the system administratorknows the root password and maintains the system. When you are running OS X on your own computer, you can enable the root account (page 430). Refer to "System Administrator and Superuser" on page 427 for more information.

Caution: Do not experiment as Superuser

Feel free to experiment when you are logged in as yourself. When you log in as Superuser, also called root or administrator, or anytime you give the Superuser/root/administrator password or run sudo, do only what you have to do and make sure you know exactly what you are doing. When you have completed the task at hand, revert to working as yourself. When working as Superuser/root/administrator, you can damage the Mac OS X system to such a great extent that you will need to reinstall Mac OS X to get it working again. See "System Maintenance" on page 425 for tasks you may want to perform working as administrator.





A Practical Guide to UNIX[r] for Mac OS[r] X Users
A Practical Guide to UNIX for Mac OS X Users
ISBN: 0131863339
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 234

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