root user is standard????

[moshpitwookie]

Wow, so today I came across a machine where all the users were standard. So i enabled the root user to rectify this.

To my horror, the root user was also only a standard user.

Has anyone ever come across this before? If so was there any other work around other than an erase and install?

cheers

 

[pdjudd]

Wow, so today I came across a machine where all the users were standard. So i enabled the root user to rectify this.

To my horror, the root user was also only a standard user.

Has anyone ever come across this before? If so was there any other work around other than an erase and install?

cheers

You do not want to enable the root user as a visible user - it is a terrible idea. The main administrator and standard accounts (and guest) are the only ones that you should be messing with. Enabling the root account is a major security risk and is largely unnecessary since the Administrator account can do almost anything. Root is not available by default for a reason - it can do too muuh damage is misused.

What are you trying to accomplish anyway? What are you trying to rectify?

 

[moshpitwookie]

I was trying to solve the issue on the machine where there was no admin user. ie not being able to authenticate installers, etc.

of course the root power is not for mere mortals, but even when enabled, the root user could not change a the existing user from standard to admin.

In the system preferences, the root user itself was described as a standard user...

 

[pdjudd]

I was trying to solve the issue on the machine where there was no admin user. ie not being able to authenticate installers, etc.

of course the root power is not for mere mortals, but even when enabled, the root user could not change a the existing user from standard to admin.

In the system preferences, the root user itself was described as a standard user...

That sounds like a permissions issue more than anything. I would do that from a boot CD where you can also modify user accounts. You should have at least one Admin account. If I recall, this was a problem on some early Leopard systems with 10.5.0 that was fixed by 10.5.1

 

[madog]

I was trying to solve the issue on the machine where there was no admin user. ie not being able to authenticate installers, etc.

of course the root power is not for mere mortals, but even when enabled, the root user could not change a the existing user from standard to admin.

In the system preferences, the root user itself was described as a standard user...

The only time I saw this was when upgrading to Leopard when it first came out. It wasn't common, but after so many installs I've seen it about half a dozen times. I could never understand it, and from my research at the time, the only method was to reinstall the OS.

It typically happened when performing an upgrade as opposed to a clean install, but I had it happen once when doing a data migration over after a clean install. That, and getting long user passwords arbitrarily truncated were the problems I have seen many times.

I would presume that this is the case on this machine as that's the only time I've seen or heard about, but who knows.

 

[pdjudd]

The only time I saw this was when upgrading to Leopard when it first came out. It wasn't common, but after so many installs I've seen it about half a dozen times. I could never understand it, and from my research at the time, the only method was to reinstall the OS.

The reason I know of it was that it happened to me and I did just what the OP wanted to do - I enabled root and changed the main account to the administrator and then disabled root again. No more that idea. I heavily dissuade people from using the root account in OSX only as a last resort. It is too easy to screw something up. Root is the way it is on OSX for a reason.

EDIT: You might be better off obtaining updated Leopard Discs with a higher patch number like 10.5.6 or whatever. That assumes that Apple will let you do that.