Not quite - Mac OS has a usable root user, you do need to provide a password for it using the CoreServices Directory Utility (an Apple provided program for handling security / user directories) and then sign in - fully documented by Apple at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102367... I know that, on macOS, by default, there is no usable root account, just sudo. You need to do some clever magic to "activate" the root account, and even that comes at the cost of several drawbacks. macOS was not meant to have a root account at all.
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It is still used a great deal (just run Activity Monitor for all processes - mine currently shows over 160 'root' processes) but most users ran into this user (in disguise) for installing software and here with the introduction of SIP (El Capitan) the root user is limited and signing of code takes over.
You can set no password requirement for Mac SUDO (it has a sudoers file controlling this similar to Linux) but I've never come across a system with this set (and I'm not going to try on my home kit!). This is documented in the MAN pages for SUDOERS on the Mac.
The AS/400 (i-series as is) O/S has a 'security officer' (QSECOFR) that acted like root for object control but not used for most O/S processes and could perform some specific tasks (O/S upgrades etc) that other users could not. This had to have a password when the OS was set to a secure mode - you could not set it to nothing OR disable the account.
The newer boxes ship with over 70 default user profiles - some very limited as to their abilities / ownership (and never signed on interactively) and they have 5 different levels of user / object security - maybe the issue is not the use of a password but the fact that root is too powerful now and should be multiple accounts (as if that will ever happen)?
Statistics: Posted by MiscBits — Sat Jun 22, 2024 12:17 am