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root user problems UNIX HELP PLEASE

mnkeybsness

mnkeybsness

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 25, 2001
2,511
0
Moneyapolis, Minnesota
okay i'm having this problem...i have an operation that NEEDS to have root user privileges.....

...i know everyone is going to say just type 'su' and then put in the password...well therein lies a tale...i have not set a root user password...i have tried going to netinfo manager and authenticating, then putting in a password...it then says the root password has been left blank...please put in a non-trivial password...well it all works fine until i say OKAY...when it brings an error message saying "Netinfo write failed (Operation Succeeded)"...confusing...then it says a couple things and says to re-authenticate to make additional changes...

another way i have tried it is by just typing in 'sudo' then the command...well the command prompts to open a file on the desktop (there is no way to get around this)...but it will then say that it could not find the file on the desktop...I CAN SEE THE FILE DIRECTLY ON THE DESKTOP...what is going on?

does anyone know how to make this work?
 
edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
To activate the root account from the terminal type:

sudo passwd root

then it'll ask you for your admin password, then it'll ask you to set the new root password, and boom, that's it, you've activated your root account.
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

Administrator
Staff member
Sep 19, 2002
39,782
7,514
Los Angeles
You refer to "the desktop" but there isn't just one desktop. Each user (i.e., each separate name that can be used to login) has a separate desktop. Before you type your sudo command, who do you login as? If you login as monkey, for example, the desktop you see corresponds to directory /Users/monkey/Desktop. Is such a directory where your command is looking?
 
Nipsy

Nipsy

macrumors 65816
Jan 19, 2002
1,009
0
In the terminal type:
/usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

then type
locate FILENAME

Then you know the path of the file to delete.
 
Taft

Taft

macrumors 65816
Jan 31, 2002
1,319
0
Chicago
Re: root user problems UNIX HELP PLEASE

Originally posted by mnkeybsness
okay i'm having this problem...i have an operation that NEEDS to have root user privileges.....

...i know everyone is going to say just type 'su' and then put in the password...well therein lies a tale...i have not set a root user password...i have tried going to netinfo manager and authenticating, then putting in a password...it then says the root password has been left blank...please put in a non-trivial password...well it all works fine until i say OKAY...when it brings an error message saying "Netinfo write failed (Operation Succeeded)"...confusing...then it says a couple things and says to re-authenticate to make additional changes...
Click to expand...

I know you've got this fixed (the NetInfo write issue is mute for you), but I had this happen to my system once and couldn't get it fixed. I'm trying to track down why it happens.

Do you have a "non-standard" system configuration?? For instance, do you have your applications on different HD partition than the rest of you system? Or is your User data on a different partition??

If so you might try moving the NetInfo Manager to the same partition as your System folder. Or setting up a User with data on the System harddrive, logging in with that user, then trying to run NetInfo Manager.

If you don't have a multipartition setup, do you have anything else thats different from a default, virgin install? I fixed my problem by reinstalling on a single partition, but I'd like to know what causes this.

Taft
 
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