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MacBook Air Portable Genius, 4th Edition
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MacBook Air Portable Genius, 4th Edition

by Paul McFedries
September 2012
Beginner to intermediate
320 pages
7h 12m
English
Wiley
Content preview from MacBook Air Portable Genius, 4th Edition

You Can’t Run Administrator Commands in Terminal

Certain Mac operations require you to open the Terminal application and run a command as an administrator by using the sudo (super user do) command. When you first enter the sudo (pronounced soo-doo) command followed by the actual command you want to execute, Terminal prompts you for your MacBook Air administrator password.

It’s important to note that the sudo command requires some kind of password. If your MacBook Air administrator password is blank, you might be tempted to press Return when sudo asks you for a password. Unfortunately, that won’t work because sudo will simply drop you back off at the command prompt without doing anything.

If you want to run administrator commands in Terminal, you must create a nonblank password for your MacBook Air administrator account. This has the added benefit of greatly increasing your MacBook Air security because the administrator account should always have a nonblank password.

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781118370230Purchase book