# HELP! su password denied...



## quiksan (Mar 26, 2003)

So i installed X11 after getting my powerbook (less than a week ago) and have just started fiddling with it.  

But when I try to do anything, it tells me Permission denied.
So I do a 'su' and when I enter my account id (which I am the root and only user on my system) it tells me the password is wrong!!

I don't recall setting up an X11 pword, and figured it would take my account pword.  No dice.

Anyone have any suggestions?  I'm really stuck here!
thanks


----------



## dixonbm (Mar 27, 2003)

Actually root is disabled by default on all Apple systems.  Apple does this to protect the ignorant.  

A good workaround is to use the sudo command.

For example sudo rm -r file

This command gives you root access.

However, if you must have root access as root then:

Go to Applications:Utilities:NetInfo Manager

First Authenticate by clicking the lock so you can make changes. Then select Security in the menubar and select Enable Root.  You can also disable root here if need be.


----------



## Giaguara (Mar 27, 2003)

Root is disabled by default (to protect the system from the users that have no idea of what the root is and what they could do with it to the system). But you can enable  it with different ways;
Apart from the mentioned this works (in terminal) e.g.

sudo passwd root

This could be useful as well.


----------



## lurk (Mar 27, 2003)

Just a final note you can run a shell from sudo so something like *sudo tcsh* will give you what is basically* a root shell.  I do that when I have lots of stuff to do as root.

-Eric 

* By basically I mean that it will still inherit lots of stuff from you like your path - so /sbin won't be there.  Using -l to get a loginshell may be sufficient to make it be really root but to be honest I was never botherd enough to try and figure out.  These are the same sort of issues one has with "su" vs "su -" .


----------



## quiksan (Mar 27, 2003)

wow!
thanks for the help everyone.
well it got me to authenticate as root, but it appears that this may not have been the problem.  i'm having trouble (still) trying to launch gimp.
I'll hafta read through those posts a little bit now.

thanks again for the help!!


----------



## symphonix (Mar 27, 2003)

You must launch gimp from the X11 terminal, not from Terminal.app (that's the most common mistake)

Let us know if you're still stuck.


----------



## quiksan (Mar 28, 2003)

> _Originally posted by symphonix _
> *You must launch gimp from the X11 terminal, not from Terminal.app (that's the most common mistake)
> 
> Let us know if you're still stuck. *



yeah, I'm doing it thru x11, 
but I start by running " ./configuration " in my gimp-1.2.3 dir
it tells me that it can't find gtk.  I've downloaded it, but don't know where to place it.  hopefully that's my biggest road block at this point, but I'm not sure.

this may become more of a moot point in the next 7 days (turning into a personal vendetta than a necessity), as a group I'm doing some work for has agreed to 'pay' me up front by purchasing in my behalf, some software, Photoshop 7 being the app of interest there...

but of course as a geek, I must keep plugging away to get this dang thing workin!  
thanks for the help!


----------



## Giaguara (Mar 28, 2003)

If you are installing all to /sw or somewhere else in a specific folder, try installing gtk etc to the same folder - if you'll use it majorly with just the applications that you use via x11 (or fink).


----------



## Darkshadow (Mar 28, 2003)

*symphonix* - you can start X11 apps from the terminal rather than the xterm, you just need to set the environment variable DISPLAY to unix:0.0 - after doing that, launching from the terminal works fine. ('Course, X11 has to be running first )


----------



## symphonix (Mar 29, 2003)

Thanks, DS, I sort of knew it could be done, but I've never bothered looking up how. The X11 standard is really quite fascinating ... I remember skimming over a HOWTO on the LDP about using it to make a video-wall, complete with non-standard arrangement of displays, even stagerred and tilted displays. Pretty cool stuff.


----------



## Darkshadow (Mar 29, 2003)

Err, just a small note on the above: if you have the terminal doing a login rather than running a shell, if you close that window, whatever X11 app you launched from it will quit.  Normal Unix thing there, when a user is logged out, all the processes started under that login will terminate.

If you have it set to run a shell, then ya don't have to worry about that.

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, look at Terminal's preferences.)


----------

