I just wanna chime in here with a quick explanation of what is going on, so
that it doesn't seem so arbitrary.
In the public beta, the root password was set to be the same as the first
user you created. This is bad for a number of reasons, but this is why you
could use 'su' with your own password. In the released version, there is NO
root password at all, which is why you couldn't use 'su'. However, sudo can
authenticate users as root using their own password, and 'su' doesn't ask
for a password if you are root, which is why 'sudo su' worked just fine.
If you really wanted to (I don't recommend this, although others might
disagree) you could set the root password using 'sudo passwd'. Then, you
would be able to log in as root if you wanted to, and 'su' would work
normally. However, I've been using my machine steadily since the release,
and have had no real need to do this - sudo has taken care of all my needs.
Ian
On 6/29/01 12:59 PM, "Nelson Goforth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Answering my own question...
>
> Since I wasn't getting anywhere with 'su' - I thought to try:
>
> sudo su
>
> And it worked! Just used my 'admin' password (don't have root
> enabled) and I was in like Flynn. Whoever that was.
>
> Thanks for the assistance. I've been using Unix (mostly perl) for a
> several years, but always on a remote server and so without a lot of
> access to the innards. I've got a lot to learn with OS X for that
> reason. But running perl, PHP and MySQL right on my own machine is
> changing the way I write websites and databases - in a good way. No
> telnet, no Fetch...
>
> Nelson
