su: Sorry?

pantherman13

02-20-2006, 05:41 PM

okay, i'm installing something via the terminal and one of the steps is:

su -c "make install"

but when I enter my root password, it says

su: Sorry

Am I not entering my password right? Because whenever I use sudo and type my password, it works fine. I would use sudo here, but it won't allow it.

thanks

voldenuit

02-20-2006, 06:03 PM

Are you sure your root password is enabled ?

It isn't by default and you better darn well know why you enable it.

pantherman13

02-20-2006, 06:04 PM

uhhh...can is there a way to check?

giskard22

02-20-2006, 06:05 PM

Sudo takes your password, but su needs the password of the user you're switching to. If you don't specify a user (which your example command doesn't), su assumes you want root. You'd therefore need to type root's password at the prompt.

I'm guessing that these instructions were not intended for a Mac user, given that by default OS X doesn't even have a root account enabled. I'm not a UNIX expert, but my guess is that using sudo instead of su -c would work fine.

pantherman13

02-20-2006, 06:20 PM

nevermind, I got it to work, but my problem still remains.

DeltaMac

02-20-2006, 07:04 PM

what problem would that be?

guardian34

02-20-2006, 08:05 PM

uhhh...can is there a way to check?
Launch NetInfo Manager (see Utilities folder) and look under the Security menu for Enable/Disable Root User.

acme.mail.order

02-20-2006, 09:41 PM

nevermind, I got it to work, but my problem still remains.
The normal final command for installing a compiled app is:

sudo make install
Password: <your admin pwd, not the root pwd>

Irregardless of what the README says, this is what you normally do on Darwin. And this only needs to be done with sudo if the app is installing itself in system space like /usr

If you are doing this a lot, "sudo bash" gets you a root shell without futzing around in NetInfo.