OK, distinct signs of progress. The root password remains mysterious; the login password is under control; and the .sage directory now seems pretty accessible:
dispo-82-248-128-135:~ ferrenmacintyre$ cd .sage/ dispo-82-248-128-135:.sage ferrenmacintyre$ ls -l total 0 drwxrwxr-x 2 root admin 68 5 Jun 00:05 db drwxrwxr-x 5 root admin 170 5 Jun 00:20 gap drwxrwxr-x@ 14 root admin 476 15 Oct 16:12 ipython drwxrwxr-x 7 root admin 238 6 Jun 21:56 sage_notebook.sagenb drwxrwxr-x 9 root admin 306 23 Oct 07:49 temp Nonetheless, I get exactly the same response from dragging sage to Terminal. Should I now try to build sage locally? (Warning: no build of anything I have yet tried has succeeded. Admittedly, I have tried only major ventures like Gerris and Ubuntu. 'Unix for Dummies' throws up its hands and refers me to my systems administrator. Has anyone written a 'System Administration for Dummies'?) On Oct 23, 1:51 am, Michael Welsh <yom...@yomcat.geek.nz> wrote: > On 23/10/2010, at 12:07 PM, Ferren wrote: > > > > > > > Now, in addition to any Unix-related problems, I may have an > > idiosyncratic Mac problem. When my Mac guru put Snow Leopard on it > > (while he was repairing the permissions problem), he set me up with no > > password for my user account. This appears to be the password that > > sudo expects--but as of OS X 10.5 (I have 10.6.4), a carriage return > > is no longer recognized as indicating 'no password', and gets the > > standard error message. > > > There is a way of changing the root password, described by Apple at > >http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1528 > > but so far no version of this has had any effect. Nor has chmod had > > any effect. > > > There is considerable confusion in my mind about passwords, and I > > haven't experimented with changing my user account password. Half the > > time I get the impression that this is the same as the root password-- > > but then why are there different ways of changing the 2? Experience > > suggests that the most probable result of messing about with passwords > > is that I will end up trying to get my machine back into the hands of > > the local guru--who is 50 km away and 500 m higher up the mountain, > > not on a bus line, and me with a bicycle. So I experiment somewhat > > reluctantly. Got any expert Snow Leopards around there? > > There are two different passwords: one, your admin account/sudo password; and > the other your root (su) password. > > Your admin password is the one that OS X is after when you type sudo. So > changing it to something will make sudo work, and leave the root password > alone. > > The root password doesn't work with sudo, you need to login as "su" (just > type that) first. However, sudo is much easier. > > HTH, > Michael > > --http://yomcat.geek.nz -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org
