How can I gain root access on a Mac OS X system without wiping the OS?

Posted by Richard T on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Richard T
Published on 2008-10-12T17:13:53Z Indexed on 2010/05/25 6:31 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 146

Filed under:

security

|

osx

|

root

My father died recently and I've inherited his Mac. I'd love to put it to use in my own life, but I don't want to wipe its brains out just so I can reconfigure it to use in my network, etc. His old files are historically important to me—I trust you can understand my desire to keep them.

I can log in as I had an account on the machine before he passed, but that's about it.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about security

sudo apt-get update errors

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
Here is what I get on my terminal when running sudo apt-get update errors. I dont know if the issue is from my sources.list or my proxy setup(have not made any changes to proxies). Thank you for any help in advanced. Ign http://security.ubuntu.com oneiric-security Release.gpg Ign http://security… >>> More
The Security-Developer Gap: Why IT Security Can't Fix Your Security Problems Alone

as seen on Devx - Search for 'Devx'
Two well-known white hats explain how hackers take advantage of security holes left by enterprise application developers. >>> More
The Security-Developer Gap: Why IT Security Can't Fix Your Security Problems Alone

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
Two well-known white hats explain how hackers take advantage of security holes left by enterprise application developers. >>> More
StackOverFlowError while creating Mac object on AS400/Java

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello all, I am a newbie to AS400-Java programming. I am trying to create my first program to test the implementation of Message Authentication Code (MAC). I am trying to use the HMACSHA1 hash function. My (Java 1.4) program runs fine on a dev box (V5R4).But fails terribly on the QA box (V5R3). My… >>> More
Google App Engine - Spring Security Issue (java.security.AccessControlException)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm currently getting the AccessControlException below when I deploy to app engine (I don't see it when I run in my local environment). I'm using GAE 1.3.1, Spring 3.0.1, and Spring Security 3.0.2. Any ideas how to get around this issue? It appears to be an issue with Spring Security trying to get… >>> More

Related posts about osx

OSX/Wine - Associating file extension (.php) with a Windows program on OSX

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Greetings, I am running PSPad (a Windows programming editor) on OSX/Snow Leopard using Wine 1.1.35 I want to associate various file extensions (.php, .js, .html) with PSPad.exe OSX Finder does not allow this association -- I can only associate file types with $.app items in Applications. How do… >>> More
osx web service spawns icon in taskbar - osx - while drawing image

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a web endpoint that displays an image of a string... When the following code is run (in tomcat) it spawns a java icon in the taskbar on OSX. Not sure if it is a problem, or whats going on. Looking for some sort of explination @RequestMapping("/text/{text}") public void textImage(HttpServletResponse… >>> More
Cannot disable spotlight indexing on volume

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have a FAT32 partition on my HDD. When using OSX, it is mounted to /Volumes/MEDIA. After a recent upgrade to Mavericks, spotlight is having trouble indexing it, eating up almost all of my system resources, and I cannot get the indexing to stop: [jay-mba-osx ~]% sudo mdutil -v -a -i off /: Indexing… >>> More
OSX - User home directories shared via NFS

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi, I've run into some problems with how I've got user home directories set up on our system here. Our server is an XServe, using Open Directory to manage the user accounts. The majority of our workstations are OSX, but there are a few running Linux (Centos 5.3), and, as time goes on, we expect… >>> More
Can't connect to local IP address on OSX

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to connect to a webserver that's running on my mac OSX 1.6. I'm able to connect to it locally using http://127.0.0.1:8888/myapp but when I attempt to connect to it using my machine's local IP address (http://192.168.1.15:8888/myapp IP shown below) from the same machine (or another on the… >>> More