Hi James, You always have to authorize system changes from an admin user account. If you perform system updates, and are using an account with admin privileges, you'll be prompted to enter your password. If you perform maintenance tasks through commands issued from terminal (even from an account with admin privileges) you will be told that you don't have permission to execute these -- you need to prefix the command with "sudo" to log in with "superuser" (admin) privileges as in: sudo periodic weekly to manually run the weekly maintenance tasks. Then you'll be prompted for your admin password.
James, if you weren't prompted for an admin user name and password, you would have to log out of your account entirely an log into an admin account to make system changes. The point of working from a standard user account is not to avoid having to avoid and admin log in, since these actions are encrypted. The main reason for working from a standard account is that you won't be able to inadvertently make major changes to your system using your power as an admin user. For example, you won't be able to delete fundamental system applications while you're learning to navigate the Mac for the first time and work with files -- just because your focus was on the wrong file when you pressed your delete key. It's actually standard practice in linux and unix that you don't log directly into the root account for the system. You set up user accounts with root privilege, and even then most users work from their regular accounts and only log in as superuser to their root accounts (by typing "su" instead of "sudo") when they need to perform changes that require system privileges. Hope this helps. Cheers, Esther James & Nash wrote: > As I have said before, for my daily computing needs I use a standard > account. however, I have a question. > > Is there a way of disabling the request by Mac OS X which brings up a > dialogue to enter an admin username and password when wanting to > effect > system changes please? I'm asking because of course, i know my admin > details > and as i'm able to enter them in the dialogue to do what i want, it > seems to > negate the security measure of a standard acount? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
