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*facepalm* Adobe thinks "root" is required to remove PDF plug-in

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I was having some hassles reading a PDF file in Safari since reinstalling Adobe Reader, so I decided to just pull their internet plug-in. I was completely dumbstruck when I found that their FAQ insists you have to enable and log in as root to do so. This is, of course, completely wrong, as any admin user can remove it.
Acrobat Help | Display PDF in browser | Acrobat, Reader XI

Disable AdobePDFViewer plug-in

You must have root user privileges to change the Safari plug-ins. To display PDFs using the Safari PDF viewer, you must disable the Adobe PDF Viewer.

  1. Quit Safari.

  2. Log in as the root user. The root user privileges aren't enabled by default because the root user can change system files. For more information and instructions, see one of the following Apple documents: Enabling and using the "root" user in Mac OS X or OS X Mountain Lion: Enable and disable the root user.


And on and on and on. All for a plug-in in /Library. The sheer ignorance here is astounding. Telling people who don't know better to enable root just opens up a can of worms, and it's completely unnecessary.

EDIT: They have a "feedback" button on that page. Everyone please feel free to give them feedback on this. They really need to fix this.
 

cwa107


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Agreed. Perhaps they're intended for an earlier OS X release? Was there a time where a standard user couldn't elevate perms on the fly?

EDIT: I see where they pointed out instructions specific to Mountain Lion. sigh...
 

vansmith

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All of that could be avoided if Adobe provided an uninstaller or if Safari had a way to disable plugins (as any other modern browser can).
 

Slydude

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Agreed. Perhaps they're intended for an earlier OS X release? Was there a time where a standard user couldn't elevate perms on the fly?
.

I think we've always been able to elevate permissions on the fly.If we haven't it has been so long ago it would be irrelevant to anyone trying to install recent versions of the plug-in.
 
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Adobe is obsessed with root - I was getting the 1301 error, trying to update my Acrobat Pro, and I wasn't going to let them have a go, while I was login as root:

ScreenShot2014-04-13at162953_zps62184000.png


Guess what finally worked? Having the original DVD (it was part of CS5 Design Standard) in the drive did the trick - no errors, no silly messages about installation been modified, no requests to login as root ... Why didn't they say so in the first place?! As this was the last update for Acrobat Pro 9, I won't have to worry about it for a while, that is, until I do something stupid, like buying a new CS ... :\
 

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