Comments on: How to Run GUI Apps as root in Mac OS X

By: anon

anon — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 19:01:41 +0000

`open` won’t run the app as root. It’s mentioned in the first paragraph.

By: parakeet

parakeet — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:52:52 +0000

su only works with root user enabled, sudo runs the command as root without root user account enabled. Fairly important difference, though su does work.

By: dev_tty00

dev_tty00 — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:31:21 +0000

There is no admin user. sudo runs commands as root. Read the man page. Try this:

sudo touch testfile

You get:

-rw-r–r– 1 root staff 0 Feb 7 11:30 testfile

root created and owns the file.

By: Lester

Lester — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:33:03 +0000

sudu command is not for root, sudo is for admin.
su is for root.

Big difference,

Open as admin:
sudo open /Applications/TextEdit.app

Open as root
su open /Applications/TextEdit.app

By: John Blommers

John Blommers — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 02:09:21 +0000

Simpler: sudo open /Applications/TextEdit.app

By: uekele

uekele — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:56:45 +0000

Modifying hosts files, cron jobs, etc for the vi averse I suppose

By: DG

DG — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:31:36 +0000

So why might one need to do this?

By: parakeet

parakeet — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:40:24 +0000

Absolutely. But one would hope they do know what they’re doing if they’re looking to do such a thing.

By: anon

anon — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:12:47 +0000

As always, giant caveat on using root for stuff. Be sure you know what you’re doing. Back up files before making major modifications.