Enabling Root in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

When troubleshooting your Mac, it helps if you can log in as a different user. Instead of creating a new user, you can enable Root. Here’s how:

  1. Open Finder,
  2. Browse to Applications -> Utilities,
  3. Open Directory Utility,
  4. Click the lock to make changes,
  5. Enter your password when prompted,
  6. From the Taskbar go to Edit -> Enable Root User,
  7. Enter a new password for Root,
  8. Confirm the password and click OK,
  9. Close Directory Utility, and log out of your Mac,
  10. At the login screen, click the picture for Other…,
  11. Type the username root, with the password you previously set.

The root account should only be used when absolutely necessary, and when you know what you’re doing.

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This entry was written by Paul, posted on Monday, 26th November, 2007 at 03:00, filed under Apple, Mac, Mac OS X, Software, Technology and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
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5 Comments

  1. Charlie AUSTRALIA Mac OS X Safari 523.10.6
    Posted Monday, 21st January, 2008 at 01:27 | Permalink

    Or do this, in terminal:

    sudo passwd root

    It will then ask you for the password.

  2. paulmc IRELAND Mac OS X Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11
    Posted Monday, 21st January, 2008 at 05:00 | Permalink

    Hi Charlie,

    This will only work of the root account is already enabled, it’s disabled by default.

    Regards,
    Paul.

  3. paulmc IRELAND Mac OS X Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11
    Posted Tuesday, 22nd January, 2008 at 23:51 | Permalink

    I’ve just played around with this, and you’re correct. My apologies.

    When using

    sudo passwd root

    the shell will return with an error message:

    passwd: Unable to change password for record root. Account is disabled.

    Despite this error message, the root account is enabled, as is confirmed by using

    su

    to login as root.

    Thanks Charlie for pointing this out.

    Cheers,
    Paul.

  4. Matt HONG KONG Mac OS X Safari 523.15
    Posted Tuesday, 12th February, 2008 at 08:21 | Permalink

    well, how do i disable Root user??

  5. paulmc IRELAND Mac OS X Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12
    Posted Tuesday, 12th February, 2008 at 08:33 | Permalink

    Once root is enabled, the Edit menu in Directory Utility will display a “Disable root” option.

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