Use Touch ID for sudo on Mac
The landscape of security is changing quite a bit. We've gone from basic username and password to 2FA, facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, and so on. Hell, my Mac unlocks simply when I have my Apple Watch near by. In the end, I probably use the Mac fingerprint key the most.
One functionality that still requires manually typing a password is using sudo from command line. Did you know, however, that you can instead require the fingerprint key instead of typing out your password?
# Open the sudo utility
sudo vi /etc/pam.d/sudo
# Add the following as the first line
auth sufficient pam_tid.so
Whether or not you'd prefer to type it out or simply use the fingerprint is obviously personal preference. Since you expect to be be typing in a command line, moving your finger to touch the key is probably not very efficient. If you do want to use fingerprint, however, here you go!
![I’m an Impostor]()
This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write, much less admit to myself. I've written resignation letters from jobs I've loved, I've ended relationships, I've failed at a host of tasks, and let myself down in my life. All of those feelings were very...
![Facebook Open Graph META Tags]()
It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites. Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly. And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website. One...
![Create a Simple Slideshow Using MooTools, Part II: Controls and Events]()
Last week we created a very simple MooTools slideshow script. The script was very primitive: no events and no next/previous controls -- just cross-fading between images. This tutorial will take the previous slideshow script a step further by:
Adding "Next" and "Previous" controls.
Adding...
![Image Reflections with CSS]()
Image reflection is a great way to subtly spice up an image. The first method of creating these reflections was baking them right into the images themselves. Within the past few years, we've introduced JavaScript strategies and CANVAS alternatives to achieve image reflections without...
First you need to make the file writable (it is not by default). And you need to do this after every macOS update, because macOS updates reset the file content.
Nice trick. Unfortunately, on Big Sur, at least, it pops up the touch id alert to use it only when the session is terminated, so it’s not useful.
But it is read-only!
As the co-author of sudo, I am amused :)
No need to make it writable when editing it with vi, you just add a
!to the save and exit command (:wq!) and it will save it corectly – it will even preserve the read only state of the file.Works nicely on Big Sur for me, it pops up the touch id alert, I touch and sudo all the things =)
Is there a way to make sudo work with the Apple Watch as well?
You can also:
*browse to the folder using finder,
*edit the file with vscode, or any other code editor
*save it to desktop
*delete original file
*and place the edited
same with nano you don’t need to make it writable.