Originally posted by rman@Jan 8 2003, 01:19 AM
I will try it. I will need to enable the root account first then execute, sudo SystemStarter restart Network.
No, you don't need to enable the root account in order to execute sudo commands. The only requirement for issuing a 'sudo' is that you be a member of the
admin group (thus placing you in the sudoers file).
The easiest way to check that your user account has admin status is to go to System Preferences > Accounts pane , Users tab. If your user account has 'Admin' under the 'Type' description field, you are an Administrator and can therefore issue sudo commands with your adminstrator password.
or go to Terminal.app and type:
groups
It should return:
staff admin
if you are an Administrator.
OS X comes shipped with root
disabled by default. You should never have to enable the root account in an OS X installation. The OS was designed in such a way that there are other replacement facilities available (such as
sudo to execute commands as root without actually enabling that potentially dangerous account. Dangerous for both security reasons and for the fact that the user can easily shoot themselves in the foot and hose their whole OS installation or data with just a single command. I always recommend NOT using root. Try
sudo for most of your work as root. Sometimes calling a root shell with
sudo -s is necessary (don't forget to exit out when done impersonating root). For the GUI end of things, Try Brian Hill's Pseudo to launch GUI applications (such as BBEdit) as root:
(outdated link removed)