371
votes
Can Touch ID on Mac authenticate sudo in Terminal?
To allow TouchID on your Mac to authenticate you for sudo access instead of a password you need to do the following.
Open Terminal
Switch to the root user with sudo su -
Edit the /etc/pam.d/sudo ...
- 16.7k
111
votes
Accepted
Can Touch ID on Mac authenticate sudo in Terminal?
With macOS Sonoma, there is now a supported option to enable Touch ID for sudo:
Touch ID can be allowed for sudo with a configuration that persists across software updates using /etc/pam.d/sudo_local....
grg♦
- 206k
106
votes
Enable sudo without a password on MacOS
Open a terminal, run sudo visudo
Edit the line:
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
To say:
%admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
Now, you should now be able to run sudo without password.
- 1,161
89
votes
Can Touch ID on Mac authenticate sudo in Terminal?
If you're using iTerm2 (v3.2.8+) you may have seen Touch ID failing to work with sudo in the terminal despite having made the pam_tid.so modification as above, and it working in previous versions. ...
- 3,757
31
votes
Accepted
OS X Catalina: add user to sudoers
It turns out that even an admin user needs to use sudo to edit the sudoers file at /private/etc/sudoers so the following did the trick to open the file for edit:
$ sudo visudo /private/etc/sudoers
...
- 577
26
votes
sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by uid 501, should be 0
You can fix this via AppleScript, without needing to reboot, or even log out & back in, or an existing root shell, or... All you need is a valid administrator password.
Run this command:
osascript ...
- 34.3k
26
votes
Can Touch ID on Mac authenticate sudo in Terminal?
TouchID does support elevating privileges, but as of now, it only seems to be supported in Apple's own apps. My guess is that 3rd party apps will have to be updated to support it, unfortunately. I ...
- 1,179
22
votes
Can Touch ID on Mac authenticate sudo in Terminal?
I have created a simple script that enables sudo to use the TouchID PAM module exactly as conorgriffin explains. It does it in a single script that you can copy-paste to a terminal in it's entirety or ...
- 711
22
votes
Enable sudo without a password on MacOS
Better not to edit /etc/sudoers directly.
Instead, the /etc/sudoers file does include a line:
## Read drop-in files from /private/etc/sudoers.d
## (the '#' here does not indicate a comment)
#...
- 321
22
votes
Accepted
sudo vs su (as non-root user)
This is expected behaviour.
The purpose of su is to switch user. It's called the substitute user identity tool. su takes the other user's password since you are switching to that user.
The su ...
grg♦
- 206k
21
votes
osascript is not allowed assistive access. (-1728)
If you run AppleScript code via osascript in Terminal, then you need to add Terminal to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, to allow it assistive access.
I took ...
- 59.8k
18
votes
Accepted
sudo: command not found
Your PATH is hosed!
First check your .bash_profile file with:
/usr/bin/nano ~/.bash_profile
Prepend lines containing something like export PATH="/... " with a # to comment them out. Save the file ...
- 67k
18
votes
Accepted
Running mc (midnight commander) under su on Mojave/Catalina/Big Sur/Monterey
It appears that mc requires to match precompiled shell version, e.g. /bin/bash to be the one.
In order to resolve this, its is required to change default root shell from sh to bash, and do it with ...
- 1,027
18
votes
Accepted
How do I uninstall Trend Micro Security Agent?
I just did this myself, here's what I learned while doing it.
A lot of the difficulty in uninstalling Trend Micro comes from the fact that it spawns processes that then interfere with removing it (...
- 435
16
votes
Accepted
Mac OS/X won't let me mkdir /usr/share/tomcat6, even as root
That's because the /usr folder, with the exception of /usr/local, is protected by System Integrity Protection (SIP).
Check this Apple support page for more details on SIP. This answer gives details ...
- 12.4k
16
votes
Fixing /etc/sudoers file
If you have access to finder and a system administrator account, you can fix this without a reboot by leveraging these.
Open up your finder and go to /etc. In here, you can view the details of the ...
- 161
15
votes
How do I install sudo insults on Mac?
To install a sudo with insults you have to compile it yourself:
Requirements: Xcode 8.0, Sierra 10.12, probably SIP disabled
Backup sudo and visudo:
sudo cp /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/sudo.backup
sudo ...
- 67k
13
votes
Can Touch ID on Mac authenticate sudo in Terminal?
You can use fingerprint for getting sudo access in the terminal or iTerm, just add auth sufficient pam_tid.so to the first line to your /etc/pam.d/sudo file.
- 231
12
votes
Where can I find logs for failed sudo attempts on macOS Sierra?
The sudo logs now go to the new unified logging system in macOS 10.12, which can be searched using the log command.
For example, to show all sudo logs from the last 3 hours:
log show --style syslog -...
- 469
12
votes
How do I install a .dmg file without being a sudo user?
.dmg is not an app, it is a disk image. If you double-click the file, it should mount a virtual disk in the Finder. From there, you will be able to drag and drop the image into your applications ...
- 325
11
votes
How to remove default Git or update it?
sudo rm -rf /usr/bin/git wont work for El Capitan due to SIP restriction
simple solution is create alias
alias git='/usr/local/bin/git'
- 211
11
votes
Accepted
Where are sudo insults stored on macOS?
If you run sudo strings /usr/bin/sudo you get (among a lot of other things)
Sudo version %s
1.8.17p1
Configure options: %s
--with-password-timeout=0 --disable-setreuid --with-env-editor --with-pam
--...
- 104k
11
votes
Accepted
Why is sudo taking way too long?
ErikMH's answer gave me the idea to first just try to revert the sudoers file, without reverting/upgrading my whole system again. So in short:
Run this to get a root shell: sudo -s
Make a copy of /...
- 134
11
votes
Accepted
pam_tid.so asks for password instead of requesting for fingerprint when docked
I had reported something similar to Apple (in my case, I was experiencing this issue while using pam_tid and sudo while running a Screen Recording). They told me that currently, this is working as ...
- 126
10
votes
Can Touch ID on Mac authenticate sudo in Terminal?
Open /etc/pam.d/sudo_local.template. I used BBEdit.
Uncomment the 3rd line #auth sufficient pam_tid.so
Save as /etc/pam.d/sudo_local.
The first line of /etc/pam.d/sudo already includes this ...
- 101
10
votes
Accepted
Kill process as root: Operation not permitted
As far as I know this is not due to SIP as such, but rather to the fact that SentinelOne includes guards against this in particular. It works by adding a kernel extension to the system, which means it ...
- 79.6k
10
votes
Why can I not use `sudo` as a `Standard` user in macOS?
sudo on macOS does work as it does on other platforms - at least through macOS 10.15.6:
If you, as a "Standard" user, want or need privileges to perform certain tasks, those privileges may ...
- 5,077
9
votes
Can Touch ID on Mac authenticate sudo in Terminal?
To wrap up Andy and Glenjamin's solution into one play:
---
- hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: install pam_reattach pam module
homebrew:
name: pam-reattach
state: present
...
- 91
9
votes
Accepted
sudo: /var/db/sudo/ts is owned by uid 501, should be 0
UID 501 is the first administrator user on the machine, usually the first user that you create ergo you. Somehow ownership of the folder was set to you instead of root.
Open the terminal and change ...
- 876
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible