Accessing Root on Mac OS X 10.8.2 : Its UNIX Darling

Accessing Root on Mac OS X 10.8.2 or rather OS X 10.8 is quite easy with 3 commands. We will use iTerm2 to show you Apple Mac’s root, you can use Terminal too. As we all know by now, Apple Mac OS X is now OS X and lacks various things which we have fixed to ‘normal’ through previous guides.

Accessing Root on Mac OS X 10.8.2 : Fix To Normal Command Line and Use iTerm2

Accessing Root on Mac OS X 10.8 not necessarily needs these fixes, but as we are UNIX and Linux user, it is difficult to accept the normal age old commands are not working. We have never tried for accessing Root on Mac OS X 10.8 before the fixes, so we can not warranty whether our way will work without the fixes or not. Using iTerm with ZSH or Z Shell is always feels good to the core users over Terminal with bash. So there are two guides which we wrote before :

• Fixing UNIX Commands After OSX 10.8 Updates
• Using iTerm2 in OS X 10.8

Practical application of Command Line was demonstrated on Installing WordPress on Mac OS X With Command Line LAMP Configuration Read more: Install WordPress on Mac OS X With Command Line LAMP Configuration guide. We do not love those MAMP, VAMP (if exists) etc. extra loads.

Accessing Root on Mac OS X 10.8.2 : Steps

Apple has very difficult way to use root :

Definitely this guide is not to use that way. Open your iTerm2 console and type pwd to see that, you are actually on the user named folder :

If you type su root and hit enter, it will ask for password but not give you the access. As we have said in many guides on server, cd .. (cd dot dot) (or one dot in some distribution) takes one directory up. So you are in /users/your-username/ location. If you type and run cd .. (cd dot dot) command twice, you will actually be at root :

We have run ls to list the directories on the root. Keep in mind, if you wrongly delete something serious, you will be in real trouble. Do not play without the basic normal sense that deleting a system file makes an OS mad.