Q1: How to rotate display? Q2: How to reset root password?

not unlike myselfnot unlike myself
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have a spiffy Dell display which I'd like to use. Plug it in with VGA and no problems. Question though. It has a feature where the hardware itself rotates (from landscape to portrait). Can I find a program or driver to tell Panther to rotate 90 degrees to the right. (and no cracks about it being a dell monitor, it was free alright?)



Question two is perhaps easier. How do I change my root password in Panther. (easier is better here)



Thanks!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    jccbinjccbin Posts: 476member
    No idea about the monitor.



    The root password can be changed two ways, basically.



    You can log in as root (if you've enabled the root user in Netinfo Manager, under Security), and then change the root password in System Preferences.



    or



    you could boot the computer from the Panther CD, wait until it brings up the Installer, then choose Reset Password from the File menu.



    Either will work, but the second will not make you able to log in if the root user is NOT enabled in NetInfo.
  • Reply 2 of 13
    tommy_thompsontommy_thompson Posts: 224member
    Well from what I understand, if you say the hardware itself will change from protrait to landscape, is it only just that. There was a company that did make the software on Mac to make that happen. I can email you the link to the actual story and the way that Apple not helping them ended it up in demise. The company still offers the stuff for Mac OS9, but has no plans currently to add the OSX support until Apple plays nice with them. PM me to remind me on monday at the office to do this for you.



    Thanks,



    tommy
  • Reply 3 of 13
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    ATI's drivers for their non-OEM graphic cards include the ability to rotate the display. I saw one driving an Apple Cinema Display rotated 90° at MacWorld.
  • Reply 4 of 13
    not unlike myselfnot unlike myself Posts: 2,037member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Xool

    ATI's drivers for their non-OEM graphic cards include the ability to rotate the display. I saw one driving an Apple Cinema Display rotated 90° at MacWorld.



    So I need to install a new graphic card? (arg!)
  • Reply 5 of 13
    escherescher Posts: 1,811member
    Not Unlike Myself: No clue about the root passoword, but that was answered above.



    As for rotating your display to portrait, you're going to have a hard time. This is a driver issue, not a hardware issue. Radius made a series of rotating portrait display for many years, and they required special drivers under OS 9. Radius never updated their drivers for OS X (this might be the story that tommy_thompson is referring to above).



    I recently bought a 17" ViewSonic ThinEdge LCD, which can rotate as well. On my Wintel desktop, I need a special Viewsonic driver (they call it PefectPortrait). The physical rotation of the display doesn't switch over the orientation of the displayed image, I have to use a contextual menu or control panel to set the orientation.



    I'm surprised not even Apple has come up with drivers for vertical/portrait display resolutions. We can choose everything from 640x480 to 1400x1600. It couldn't be that difficult to add 768x1024 and 1024x1280 etc.



    Now that I mention the resolutions, I seem to remember that tonton was running a hack that let him use his TiBook in portrait mode (with an external mouse and keyboard, of course) while he was in Switzerland. Can you related your experience, tonton?



    Xool's experience with a display being rotated 90 deg at ATI's MWSF booth is encouraging also. But it's still a driver issue. It's just that ATI bothered to experiment with their drivers.



    Bottom line: Who is going to write the portrait drivers?



    Escher
  • Reply 6 of 13
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    Is it possible to do su;passwd to change root password?
  • Reply 7 of 13
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    you can change the password even starting the mac on single-user mode .. so all the encryption (file vault ) etc are kind of pointless to protect the mac from being stolen the infos.
  • Reply 8 of 13
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gon

    Is it possible to do su;passwd to change root password?



    not exactly. su will enter root-land, but passwd would be delayed until you exit out of su. so you'd become root, then you could do 'passwd'. or to minimize root's exposure, you could use the -c option for su.

    su root -c 'passwd root'



    su will ask for root's current password, then passwd will come in asking for the new password (twice).



    if you are an admin and don't know the current root password, you can also change the root password like this:

    sudo passwd root



    sudo will first ask for your password (at a prompt that says "password:"). Then passwd will kick in, asking for root's new password (twice). none of the passwords will be echoed (meaning, you won't see them as you type).
  • Reply 9 of 13
    escherescher Posts: 1,811member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    The program I was running was a buggy hack, sweet though it looked, called MacPortrait.



    Thanks for adding this for the record, tonton. It's a shame that MacPortrait was never updated for OS X and buggy to begin with.



    It's kind of like the spanning hack for the iBook. I want to use any new 'Book I buy in clamshell mode. With the iBook hack, you can kind of do that, but not reliably. In the hack's "clamshell" mode, only 16MB VRAM (of 32MB) is available for the external display, even though the internal LCD is not used. On top of that, there are stability issues under various scenarios. In the end, nothing beats off-the-shelf solutions from Apple or established third parties (in my case the 12-inch PowerBook, which supports clamshell mode from the Apple factory).



    Bottom line: If you can't buy it off the shelf, give up! \



    I remember trying to hack a driver to be able to use a PC only integrated Ethernet/Modem card in my PowerBook 2400c. It never worked (probably because I have no clue about programming or drivers) and I just ended up wasting money chasing windmills.



    Don Quixote, aka Escher



    [Edit: I misspelled "Quixote."]
  • Reply 10 of 13
    guarthoguartho Posts: 1,208member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Not Unlike Myself

    So I need to install a new graphic card? (arg!)



    Can you not download the correct non-OEM drivers from ATI for your OEM card? It's not as if the card is different.
  • Reply 11 of 13
    escherescher Posts: 1,811member
    Check out this page for more information about MacPortrait. From Google results, it appears that MacPortrait supports Mac OS 7.x to 9.x. It also looks like MacPortrait was originally developed by NEC/Mitsubishi but then sold to a small software company (linked above).



    Who else thinks that portrait resolutions should be built into Apple's Display control panel?



    Escher
  • Reply 12 of 13
    not unlike myselfnot unlike myself Posts: 2,037member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Guartho

    Can you not download the correct non-OEM drivers from ATI for your OEM card? It's not as if the card is different.



    Bummer news. It's a stock Geforce 2 MX.
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