Mac Os Install Single User Mode Editing Hard Drive Permissions


10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5 | 18 comments | Create New Account

Mac Os Install Single User Mode Editing Hard Drive Permissions Mac

MacOS Mojave (/ m oʊ ˈ h ɑː v i, m ə-/ mo-HAH-vee) (version 10.14) is the fifteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.' S desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. Mojave was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 4, 2018, and was released to the public on September 24, 2018. The operating system's name refers to the Mojave Desert and is part of a series of. Mar 15, 2018  Most Mac users will be better off formatting external drives with exFAT, ensuring they work well on both Windows and Mac OS X without any extra work. If you must write to an NTFS drive, one of the paid, third-party drivers will be the easiest option. On your Mac, select an item, then choose File Get Info. Click the lock icon to unlock it. Enter an administrator name and password. In the Sharing & Permissions section, do any of the following: Add a user or group: Click the Add button below the list, select a user or group, then click Select. Click your Mac’s hard drive and select the user account that’s experiencing problems. At the bottom of the window, click the Reset button under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs. This will just reset the user account’s permissions, not its password. Restart your Mac when you’re done. Jul 22, 2008  Probably have to start from another volume, and use terminal or something that lets you look at the drive to do a get info on it so you can change the permissions back. If you can get into the drive with single user mode it might help, since that will give you a command line to repair the drive. Nov 19, 2014  Boot into single-user mode (boot while holding down CMD-S) Follow the on-screen instructions to mount the file system as read-write (a fsck/mount command followed by a mount command) Type the following: 'chmod o+r /' followed by 'chmod o+x /' Type 'exit' to leave single user mode and complete the boot sequence.

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10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5
It's not as elegant as just deleting the whole netinfo database, but it still seems to accomplish what I need.
Anybody ever try deleting the whole dslocal on Leopard? That's what Apple replaced the NetInfo database with. It's located in /var/db/dslocal .
10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5
How is this different from this hint:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2007110800450816
10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

For one thing, it was submitted earlier, it would seem.

Mac os install single user mode editing hard drive permissions mac
10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

The earlier hint was geared toward letting you delete all accounts from a system, which you can't do from the GUI because System Prefs' Accounts pane is hard-coded to not let you delete the last Admin account on a system.
So, yes, this hint is basically the same but is geared more toward deleting just the one account you set up for your testing/setup purposes.
Same tools, but a different approach for (slightly) different circumstances.

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5
Here's a little script I wrote that will clear user info on recent versions of OS X. Drop it in the root level of the hard drive, then boot to single user mode and run it.

Please note that I hard coded the user account; someone could easily modify it to find it automatically or as a command line argument. Also the script removes itself, and the name and location are hardcoded, so adjust those as well.

My scripting is pretty rusty but it gets the job done; I'd love to see someone clean it up a bit. Really wish this functionality could get rolled into AppleJack...

PS - I'm sure I looked at the same sources as the OP when I wrote this - I don't want to take credit for the methodology.

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

Just noticed my account name on the original post. I didn't even realize that was my submission! I sent it in a LONG time ago (at least in 'net time). So sorry for commenting on my own hint w/o realizing it!
It's been a while since I was researching this but I don't think just deleting /var/db/dslocal worked - don't remember why. It probably deletes too many entries.

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

excuse my ignorance with this script/command line stuff:
what's the proper way to save this? just in textedit? or script editor?
can you give the command to run this at single user startup, after moving to root of boot drive?
Also, the only thing needed to be modified on your script is 'username', right, to the temp user I want to delete?
thanks in advance!!

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

Two simple changes to address the two issues of your script (the hardcoded user name and script name):
You can get the short ID 501 user name with the command: id -un 501
So if you add this
USERNAME=`id -un 501`
at the beginning of your script and then substitute all 'username' occurrences with $USERNAME you get the automatic user detection you wished for.
Secondly, you can get the full pathname of the called script using the $0 variable, so you can substitute the lines:
# remove this script
rm /userreset.sh
with those:
# remove this script
rm $0
and the script will be deleted doesn't matter which name you gave it.

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

bcmeta-
Copy and paste it into text edit, make sure it's plain text not RTF, then save it as 'userreset.sh' or whatever you'd like; just make sure the '.sh' is on the end. And note that if you change the name of the script you'll need to change the script line that deletes itself - use wallybear's suggestion to make it painless.
Put it in the root level of the hard drive, reboot into single user mode, and type 'sh userreset.sh' or whatever you named it.
The script will run then delete itself and shut the machine down when it's finished.
wallybear-
Thanks for the input! I'm REALLY rust on shell scripting but figured there was probably an easy way to do this. For our needs the hardcoding is fine but I certainly prefer to have a more flexible solution.
Do you know off-hand if the 'id' command and '$0' variable work consistently with 10.3 & 10.4? As you can see I'm trying to keep the script flexible enough to use with all the OS's we're likely to need it with.
Thanks for the help!

Windows
10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

'Do you know off-hand if the 'id' command and '$0' variable work consistently with 10.3 & 10.4? As you can see I'm trying to keep the script flexible enough to use with all the OS's we're likely to need it with.'
The $0 variable is a standard for bash/sh, so it works in 10.3 & 10.4 also.
Regarding the 'id' command, man states that 'The id command appeared in 4.4BSD.'; I don't know if it is available in 10.3.x in general, but I can confirm it is from 10.3.9 and later.

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5
Single

Thanks... of course I just did a little testing and it looks like the id command won't work in single user mode without starting netinfo/directory services. Not a problem for 10.5 since that has to be done anyway, but I guess I'll have to see about starting & stopping netinfo in 10.3 & 10.4. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble - starting to wonder if listing the user directory might be easier!

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

I recently wanted to do this but kept running into problems, even with the other hints here at the site.
One problem was that while I was able to successfully delete the temp user account and the AppleSetupDone file, even after rerunning the setup upon restart the OS does not set the first user to User ID 501.
Nilness, did you check to see if your hint here resets the User ID to 501 upon rerunning of the setup routine?

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5
10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

Mac Os Install Single User Mode Editing Hard Drive Permissions Free

Just checked this on a 10.5 system and yes, the next user id after resetting will be 501.
In 10.4 and earlier IIRC it will be 501 as well, since you're deleting the whole netinfo db.
And for the poster who asked why it matters, if you're recovering data or trying to rebuild the user accounts from another drive it's MUCH easier to make sure the user ids match up from the start.

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

This seems to work except I'm looking to have iWork '09 installed first, do software updates system-wide, and then delete the user account.
I can't seem to find a way to make this work as after restarting Pages, Numbers, and Keynote all say:
'Files that iWork needs are missing. To restore the missing files, use the iWork Installer to reinstall iWork.'
Any help or ideas?

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

I saved the scipt as 'script.sh' on Macintosh HD (root level of hd). How can I run this script from the command line ??

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

Take a Look here:
http://install-climber.blogspot.com/2011/09/delete-users-and-groups-from-terminal.html

10.5: Delete users accounts from command line in 10.5

At the top, the hint says this must all be run from single user mode. I've found there is an alternative: Run it via ssh on a Mac that you're sure is at the login screen with nobody logged in locally. The dscl commands certainly do fail if you're logged into the GUI, but work fine over ssh, which is great news for those of us trying to support Macs that are hundreds of miles away that we can't put into single user mode.
HTH,
-K