11/20   mac users: I just got my first mac (from a friend, wanted to check
        it out) do you recommend su'ing to root and poking around to see
        whats going on? apple "strongly advises against" it ... but just
        wondering if thats because most of their user base is not familiar
        with unix ... also, is there a default root password? the person
        I got it from did a clean install before they gave it to me (not
        sure if that process prompts for a root p-word) thx
        \_ The root account is disabled by default. But sudo works great.
           Curious why do you need to be root to see what's going on?
           \_ maybe I dont? i just feel like I should have root on my
              own machine ... but maybe thats not neccesary for working
              w/ darwin? I'm thinking like, eg, ps -a does not seem to
              be showing me all proc's
           \_ er, ok, sorry. re: the above, ps -aux is doing what I
              want ... so you're saying I dont need root to effectively
              administer this machine? thx
              \_ all you need is sudo
        \_ if you really want a root shell: sudo /bin/sh
           \_ sweet thanks. so all the passwords in etc/passwd are starred
              and there is no shadow file ... I guess that means no user
              accounts can be logged in? I was also suprised to see that
              the osX user accounts have no entries in the passwd file
              but I guess it was naive to assume they would be there...
              so its seeming to me like the unix core does less than i
              thought and there is more custom mac stuff on top ... what
              do other mac users think? is messing with my system as
              root just a surefire path toward instability? or can I
              play with things at that level. thx
              \_ osx uses netinfo to store user passwds; netinfo was
                 the next version of nis/ldap.
                 Re messing around as root: messing around as root
                 is a sure fire way to instability on any *nix system.
                 There is nothing you can't do via sudo.
        \_ There is nothing wrong with suing to root a Mac OS X system if
           you understand what root account is for. However, Apple has
           disabled the root account becuase they were afraid that some
           people would try to login as a root user into the GUI session
           which can be a very dangerous thing to do. You can enable the
           root account from the netinfo manager. Note that only the
           users who are in the admin or wheel groups can su to root
           (so if you add a non-admin account for yourself, you'll have
           to add yourself to the wheel group through the netinfo manager
           which doesn't seem to be documented well...)