municipal Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 Hi, My company offered me a new mac, and am quite impressed by it (apart from this grainy looking screen :S oh well it evenly lighten and no dead/stuck pixels.) Because my account has no system admin priviledge I can't install anything! So I was hoping someone here could help me recover the root password... Also to note is that, they didn't bother giving me the OS X CD... cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Fogge Posted January 31, 2007 Share Posted January 31, 2007 Well, you could always go buy or otherwise locate an OS X cd. On the installation discs, there is a password reset option. Additionally, if you have access to a Linux CD, you could always boot up through there, chroot into OS X and then use passwd to reset your password but only if you have a non-journaled filesystem. If you do, then you can severely mess up your installation. As far as getting root access without any other tools, you are pretty screwed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
municipal Posted February 1, 2007 Author Share Posted February 1, 2007 thanks for the reply. It may be a silly question but is there a way to get the Admin password? I just want to install few utilities and it keeps on asking for it. (root and admin are two different passwords right? ) thanks in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Fogge Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Admin Password is any account with Admin Rights (may even be your account). You can find Admin level accounts through System Preferences -> Accounts The root password can be either be a random password generated by the system with any Admin account having Wheel access to sudo root with their own individual passwords, or it can be a manually set password allowing Root to be an actual account rather than just a system account. As far as finding their passwords, they are encrypted. The best you could do is use a script that would do a brute-force attack on the system to try to get the password. It would be much easier to actually RESET the password using one of the methods mentioned above. That is unless you are doing something squirrely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardinal Posted February 5, 2007 Share Posted February 5, 2007 (edited) thanks for the reply.It may be a silly question but is there a way to get the Admin password? I just want to install few utilities and it keeps on asking for it. (root and admin are two different passwords right? ) thanks in advance There may be other ways, but this is what I know: - boot into single mode. hold command-s at startup (I think that's how it works on real macs, I only have a hackintosh). You will have the command line with root privileges. - you want to create a new admin user, from there it is easy to accomplish other things, like give yourself admin rights, by logging in as that user, and using the GUI. To create a new user from the command line, use one of these: http://mikesalsbury.com/mambo/content/view/130/2/ or http://www.mcelhearn.com/article.php?story=2004110211244242 Disclaimer: I haven't tried either of these methods. Alternatively, if you know which account has admin privileges, you can just reset their password by booting into single user mode and typing: passwd <username> and it will prompt you for new password for that user. Edited February 5, 2007 by cardinal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tuxuser33 Posted February 19, 2007 Share Posted February 19, 2007 (edited) Why not ask a friend for the CD? It's not a crime. Boot your CD, go to utilities, reset password, reboot. Edited February 19, 2007 by tuxuser33 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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