Make an Admin Account

Maads 101 and um, um, a lot of people don't have access to admin on their computer and they want to be able to access admin so they can run stuff on Terminal and stuff like that. Um, unless you have a Mac OS X Leopard, you can't enable root the way we showed you, and you can't enable root through the GUI unless you're an admin.

So, this is another way that can work in other operating systems such as Tiger. No, this will not work if you have Single User mode, oh, um, not Single User; if you have um, Open Firmware password. This utility is an application that blocks any boot besides the normal boot. But basically, if you can do any boot besides the normal boot, then you'll be fine, and this process should work.

So, the first thing you need to do is to, sorry about that, so the first thing you need to do is to restart your computer. So you hold the power button once, and you click restart. Right now, I am not an administrator, by the way, and I don't know how well you can see this, but I'll put the codes on the video as well as in the description of the video too. I'll dim the brightness so you guys can see. There we go, I think you guys can see a little better now. But um, the codes will be there, so just hit restart. I'm just going to close those down. Sorry about that, but this time you hold Apple S, and the S does stand for Single User mode, in case you're wondering.

So, go reboot in Single User mode, which is basically the Unix command. It's like a full screen terminal logged into the root. The first thing you want to do is to mount the file system, and so there's the command to do this. It'll also be on the screen and in the description of the video. It's /sbin/mount -uw /, and after you press that, just press enter. Another line should come up; just type this code: rm /var/db/sl/AppleSetupDone.

Okay, and basically, um, hold on, I have to type it right. Okay, but basically what that command does is it deletes a file, and it's not a very important file. Um, hold on, let me just type the command in /var/db/sl/AppleSetupDone.

So basically, the first time you open your Mac, you get a startup video and all that. But, as you can see in a second, and basically, as soon as um, that process is done, your Mac um thinks your Mac thinks that you have um, what's it go? It puts that file there so that way it says if that file's there, then um reboot normally, and if that's not there, then reboot the setup way.

So now that I pressed that, I'm just going to press enter, and I'll get a new line as normal. So, I'm just going to say reboot to reboot my machine. And as you can see, my machine is going to reboot. But this is not a normal REO reboot. Again, it thinks I'm turning on my Mac for the first time, but just cause that file is missing, it doesn't mean that all my files are missing.

So all my files are still going to be there, but it's just going to do the startup video. As you can see, it's going to say use English as a main language. Just select that, wait a little bit.

Okay, here's the Tiger startup video. [Music]

Okay, okay, so now it's going to ask you what keyboard you can use. Just say English. Well, you can say whatever you want. I'm going to say English. Okay, okay, then there's a couple important steps. So you have to keep watching this video even though you probably think you understand it all now, cause you don't.

Okay, say Do not transfer my information. CU? It's asking if you want to get information onto your Mac because it thinks you don't have any information on it. But you do, so you say continue. Say Do not transfer my information, or you will lose everything.

It'll ask you to select your keyboard. Continue with that. Okay, it asks you if you have Wi-Fi; can do it, and then type your password. Okay, I'll just type my Wi-Fi password. Okay, it's connecting.

It'll ask you if you have an Apple ID. I'll just say um, I'll just say my Apple ID. So, all of these questions shouldn't matter, but there's going to be some that are going to matter, so you have to keep watching now. It should load all your information about your Apple ID; you can continue.

It just asks you where you're going to use your computer. It doesn't really matter what you say; this is just for Apple's purposes. Now, this is the most important step, so pay attention, or you could mess everything up.

Right here it says create your account, and it's going to um, I'm just going to call my account poop because I'm just going to remove the account right after this video because I, of course, have admin access to this. So, and then I'll make the password poop. Okay, and then I'll verify it: poop. There we go.

Now, you do not make an account that you already have that name, cause then it will replace that account with this new account. So it has to be called something that you don't have an account yet, cause I don't want people getting mad at me saying I didn't warn you and they lost all their files.

Because if you make an account that already has an account name, it's the last time I'm going to say it, you're going to lose all your files. Don't go blaming me. So then you can just say create or continue. It's creating the account. As you can see, it says take a video snapshot, or you can choose one from the library.

I'll choose one from the library. Continue. It asks you if you say I'll just say um, I don't want to try to MobileMe because I'm just going to waste time, because I'm just going to remove the account afterwards, and then it'll say done.

Now there are a couple of other stuff that I want to tell you about, so just wait for this to finish loading. Now it'll reboot you into your account, and by default, every time you reboot your computer, it'll be into that account.

Now, first off, um, for those who just wanted to change the current administrator password, um, you can go into System Preferences after you make your admin account. You can't do this before you make an admin account, and then you go under accounts, you click the lock to make the changes, and I'll just type poop, cause that's the password I made, and here are all the accounts.

So here's another administrator, and I can just say reset password. It'll ask you for a new password and um, to verify the new password, and you don't need to know their old password. So if you have a school computer, you can do that.

Um, by the way, don't go telling everyone that you got it from us, cause then we could get in trouble. Okay, and the last thing is a lot of people want to make, they want to make an admin account and not change the password of admin accounts.

That's fine, but there's something we really recommend doing; it's called root. And what root is, is an admin account that has more power than admin does, and it's invisible. So if you go on the login screen, you won't see it.

So, to do this, hold on, it's asking me for my um, for my stuff. Okay, so to do this you go into Directory Utility, and that will be in your Utilities folder in Applications. So go on Applications and click on Utilities, and you should find something that's called Directory Utility. You can open that and then you can say at the top, enable root, or you can just watch our video, enable root the easy way on your Mac.

That's, I think that's what it's called. So I hope this helped you. Thank you very much for watching, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Have a nice day, subscribe to my Kids 101, and goodbye.