#Apple terminal sudo definition how to
#Apple terminal sudo definition update
#Apple terminal sudo definition full
#Apple terminal sudo definition password

I chose to close the window anyway, and immediately worried that I may have done something I shouldn’t have.Īfter running that updater command again on one or two other occasions since (though those times exiting Terminal through the exit-command route), I’ve since read on that using that sudo command to force malware-definitions updates “can cause users to lose their login.keychain file.” (Thanks for the initial generally-broadcast advice to use that sudo command, Macworld.) I don’t yet actively use the Keychain for storing passwords, so I thought, no problem. When (eventually) I tried to close the Terminal window (without knowing at the time about using the exit command), I got this pop-up message: “Do you want to close this window? Closing this window will terminate the running processes: …” followed by a short list that included, I think, login, sudo, man, maybe bash.

#Apple terminal sudo definition password

As no characters were appearing in the Terminal window for the password, I thought nothing was happening but I pressed the Enter key (or the appropriate button in the password pop-up, whichever was the case) anyway. To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.” After my visit to man sudo and maybe then having to paste in the sudo command again, to run it I entered my admin password. Please double-check your typing when using sudo. The command I ran, per the Macworld article, was “sudo /usr/libexec/XProtectUpdater,” which brought up this typical warning: “Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss or the deletion of important system files.

#Apple terminal sudo definition update

I have a spring 2011 MacBook Pro, running OS X 10.6.8 (it may have been running a prior update version when I got myself into that maybe-troublesome Terminal session some weeks ago).

#Apple terminal sudo definition how to

Recently, I tried to use a sudo command in Terminal for the first time, following advice published by Macworld for forcing updates to OS X’s new XProtect malware definitions, and I wonder whether I’ve done any damage by what I did, from knowing next to nothing about command-line protocols, how to exit Terminal properly, and so on. Trying to get things right and agreeable to me, for security and utility, is taking up much of my available time-as much as, or often more time than I spend USING my Mac. So to answer your question, do not rebuild your entire tool chain in recovery, instead you can use these to restrict and encrypt your data so that someone with physical access can only destroy your data and not modify it.I’m new to Mac (less than a year), and to administering my own computer. This same advice applies fairly evenly for cron and other restricted tools or environments like containers. Being skilled about working in a restricted shell is a specialized area and most people don’t need to spend any time learning it. If you get an error in recovery - that error lets you know you need better instructions or to be with a mechanic that can help with your repair. It’s designed to get you to a service station at low speed, not to continue your race or journey. Think of recovery terminal as a spare tire. You are crossing two intentionally designed abstraction barriers to ask for brew to run in recovery. Brew is designed to not even use sudo except for specific limited setup and maintenance tasks so it uses the normal shell like the normal shell uses recovery shell. This is good since you have none of the protections (guardrails) of a normal shell so the system is designed to only work with fully qualified paths to precisely the limited subset of tools that are available.

#Apple terminal sudo definition full

When you take instructions that were written for a full shell ( su and sudo), they will break.

Recovery terminal is a severely restricted shell, many commands are intentionally not available.

Recovery terminal dramatically changes mounted filesystem paths ( be sure / is what you think it is before making changes).

You are already root user in recovery terminal.

This is a very common misunderstanding and an understandably confusing situation.