How to Enable the "root" Account on Mac OS X

On Becoming root

The sudo command is a good way to do this, because it runs only one command as the "superuser" at a time. For example

% sudo cat /etc/sudoers

If you need to do something which requires more than a single command then you can open a command shell running as "root". You can still use the sudo command to do this. When logged in as the "Admin" user open the Terminal application and give the command

% sudo tcsh

On MacOS X the "Admin" account is configured so that it is allowed to use the "sudo" command, so you can get by without enabling the "root" account.

The more traditional way to become "root" in Unix is the su command. This will work for the "Admin" user but will fail for a non-privileged user account because of another old Unix custom which is respected by Mac OS X: only members of the "wheel" group are allowed to su to root.

There are two ways around this. First of all, For 10.5 and earlier you can use NetInfo Manager as described below), to add your user account to the "wheel" group. Follow the instructions below to run NetInfo Manager, but select the "groups" map instead of the "users" map. Find the "wheel" group, edit the "users" property, and add the name of your user account to the list. For 10.6 and beyond you can use the 'dscl' command from the command line, as described later.

But there is an easier way. Local users who are not in the "wheel" group cannot su to "root", but can still ssh to the "root" account. Give the command

% ssh root@localhost

Remember, as "root" you should do what needs to be done and then go back to being an unprivileged user.