On Mac, how do I give myself permanent sudo privleges?

In Mac OS X 10.6, how do I give myself permanent sudo privleges? is it like linux, in the "/etc/sudoers" file?

FALL3N

Posted 2011-06-06T20:50:54.540

Reputation: 431

3You know that sudo is there for a reason, right? The idea is to give access to superuser privileges without being constantly logged in as root (not a good idea). – blahdiblah – 2011-06-06T21:26:28.087

Answers

Not exactly experienced in OSX, but it seems to be located in either one of the following:

/etc/sudoers

/private/etc/sudoers

It is recommended that you use visudo to edit the file but you can use another text editor.

Under the line that says root ALL=(ALL) ALL

You add the name of the user and user ALL=(ALL) ALLto give yourself permanent sudo privileges.

paradd0x

Posted 2011-06-06T20:50:54.540

Reputation: 7 771

1On OSX at least, you execute just sudo visudo to edit the sudoers file (don't specify the file.) – Parag – 2017-04-01T14:44:09.300

2ls -ld /etc results in lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 30 Jun 2010 /etc -> private/etc, so they're both the same file. – Daniel Beck – 2011-06-06T21:22:31.843

yea, I did it in fedora a while ago.. It seems to be the same process, but thanks.. didn't wanna just go haphazardly changing important system file :D – FALL3N – 2011-06-15T00:40:09.460

You can, of course, edit /etc/sudoers manually to accomplish this.

But Mac OS X's System Preferences has a method built-in to achieve the same thing: Give the user an Administrator account, instead of a Standard account, and it will be added to /etc/sudoers as sudoer automatically (via the wheel group membership).

Users will still need to enter their own password though, which is a good thing ^(tm).

Daniel Beck

Posted 2011-06-06T20:50:54.540

Reputation: 98 421

I discovered you need to enable root access in MacOSX 10.8. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204012

– Keith John Hutchison – 2015-06-22T16:54:23.433

Yeah, I've done that in fedora, but I wanted to ask before I did it, so I didn't break anything.. thanks – FALL3N – 2011-06-15T00:38:33.967

Wait, aren't there other special privelages that come with giving a user an "Administrator" account other than just that it adds them to the sudoers file? – cmcculloh – 2012-07-16T15:53:32.090

2@cmcculloh It's not adding the account to the sudoers file, but membership in the wheel and admin groups, complete with e.g. write permissions to /Applications and comparable other global folders. Just compare the output of e.g. id in Terminal of normal and admin users. – Daniel Beck – 2012-07-16T18:41:11.737

sudo in OSX is exactly like that under Linux, and like Linux man sudo shows the details

sudo determines who is an authorized user by consulting the file /private/etc//sudoers.

/etc is a symbolic link to /private/etc so your suggestion of /etc/sudoers will work.

user151019

Posted 2011-06-06T20:50:54.540

Reputation: 5 312

You could as well run sudo -s

This will give you root permissions for that session.

To return to normal permissions, just type exit

OxFEEDFACE

Posted 2011-06-06T20:50:54.540

Reputation: 11

This answer is pretty awesome. There's definite use cases for having sudo access for just a session. – ericmjl – 2017-09-25T14:48:05.417

Unlock the root account.

Steps to unlock "root" in Mac:

•1.Open Directory Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Directory Utility.app)

•2.Go to Edit > Enable Root User

•It will prompt for password,press ok for BLANK password.

Logout,then type root in Username and your IN!!!!!!!! (Note:Make Sure that NAME & PASSWORD IS CHECKED IN LOGIN OPTIONS.)

MacMaster1000

Posted 2011-06-06T20:50:54.540

Reputation: 21

This isn't an answer to the question that was asked. Sudo is not the same as unlocking the root account. – HopelessN00b – 2014-08-14T01:00:02.613

In MacOSx 10.8 sudo is not available until root access is enabled. So the answer is valid. – Keith John Hutchison – 2015-06-22T16:55:39.197