After a performing an upgrade to 10.5 Panther, and tempting fate and not doing an archive and install, I noticed that none of my user accounts had Admin privileges any more. Of course, this makes doing anything very difficult. It also means that you cannot create a new admin account, and in most cases, not install software. And if you are like most users of OS-X, I suspect you have no idea what the root password is to get around this. I did not.
Most of the solutions I searched for on the web suggested either a new install, and I did not want to go through that again. And, it is not necessary. If you know your root password, simply use “root” as an account name and the proper password, and you can change anything you want, swicth accounts to admin, etc. etc. But what if you do not know it?
Well, here is a way to set the root password and then change your accounts to have admin privs. It is not difficult, but walk the steps carefully as you will be running as the root user, and you can damage your system if you delete, move, or rename files. None of that is suggested here.
Ok, these are the steps:
1). Reboot your computer and hold down Command-S. This will boot your Macintosh into “single user mode” as root, and while you will not see the usual OS-X desktop, you now have access to some interesting things as a single root user.
But do not jump ahead, we are not going to change your accounts here, because it is always easier from the graphical user interface, which we will get back to in a minute.
2). You will see a screen of text JUST like a terminal window, which is what you are looking at full screen.
At the prompt, first type:
/sbin/mount -uw /
To protect the system, it boots into single user mode with the file system locked and protected from changes. This command changes the read-only settings on the file system so you can make changes to files and save them, which will be necessary to change the root password.
3). Now at the command prompt, type:
passwd
This command allows you to change the root password. Simple follow the prompts to set the root password to something YOU will know and remember.
4). Now type:
reboot
This will reboot the system, wait for it to get back into the normal OS-X desktop view.
5). Now go back to System Preferences, and select Accounts, and click on the small lock. When it asks for an admin password, use ‘root’, and enter the password you just set.
6). This will unlock the user settings so you can make changes. Select the accounts you want to change, check the box that says “allow user to administer this computer”, close the window.
7). No log out for the changes to take effect, and when you log back in, you will now have Administration privs once agian.
Hope this helps anyone else who gets stuck there.
-Owen-
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