One of the great things about having a Mac with built-in biometric authentication is not having to constantly type in your password. It’s particularly nice for those of us that work in Terminal, where you can set up Touch ID to authenticate the sudo
command that bestows administrative powers.
However there’s been one drawback to enabling that feature: because it means altering a system file, the change wouldn’t generally survive a system update—the file would get overwritten by the stock file every time macOS released a new version, meaning you’d have to go in and make the change again. I’m probably not alone in having given up on having Touch ID enabled, rather than playing the constant cat-and-mouse game.
But wait, there’s good news: in macOS Sonoma, Apple appears to have provided a new framework to work around this problem. As Mastodon user Rachel pointed out, Sonoma allows for an additional file that will persist through updates. So you can make the change once and it should stick.
From what I can tell, this system was put in place precisely for this feature. Apple provides a sudo_local.template
file as an example, which not only contains a comment explaining that sudo_local
will survive updates, but also even includes the code necessary to enable Touch ID.
So, without further adieu, here are the steps for enabling this feature in macOS Sonoma, once and for all:1
Open the Terminal app. Navigate to the directory that stores the authentication files by typing the following:
cd /etc/pam.d
Next, copy Apple’s provided template to the actual file that the system will read. You’ll need to use sudo
and enter your administrator password to get permission:
sudo cp sudo_local.template sudo_local
Finally, open up the file you just made using your text editor of choice; I prefer pico
.2 You’ll need to use sudo
again here.
sudo pico sudo_local
In that file, navigate to the line that contains with pam_tid.so
and delete the hashtag (#) at the beginning. Save the file out by pressing Control-X, typing ‘Y’ to save your changes, and hitting Return.
That’s it; you’re done! We’ll have to wait and see if this truly works as described, but fingers crossed you should be able to keep Touch ID access for sudo
for ever and ever.
It’s time for my annual list of film photography blogs! One of the best things about film photography today is the community of people who enjoy everything about it: gear, films, shooting, photographs. Lots of us share our adventures on our blogs.
I was sad to remove 15 blogs from this list this year. A few of them no longer exist, and most of the rest have gone fallow. But I added an equal number of new or new-to-me blogs this year, keeping the list at 104 total blogs.
In this list’s first several years, most of the blogs were about vintage film gear. But over the last few years more and more new blogs are about making film photographs. I like this shift toward writing about film photography and not just gear. I think this shows that film photography has become far more alive and well than any of us could have imagined even ten years ago!
If you don’t see your blog here, I hope you won’t feel put out. Maybe I just don’t know about it. Let me know which blogs I’m missing in the comments!
If you do see your blog here but think my description misses the mark, go to my About page and send me a message on the contact form. Keep it to one or two brief sentences. I’ll edit what you send me for length and clarity, and update this post with it.
Here’s what it takes for a blog to make this list:
And now, the list! You’ll see next to blogs that are new on this year’s list, or have returned after being inactive.
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