Login screen shows "update needed" but no updates are available

A Disk Utility repair of permissions does nothing to the separate file system, on an Apple_Boot slice, that is used when EfiLoginUI prompts for a passphrase.

In Ask Different, please see today's [Update Needed] answer to What does “[Update Needed]” mean when attempting to boot from an encrypted backup?

Okay, I have a possibly new wrinkle in solving this.

I was curious about the link to FileVault because I have FileVault turned on. So I looked at the screen. It was locked, so I clicked the lock to unlock the settings.

Once I did that, I was going to turn off FV as indicated, but I changed my mind and decided I needed to do a full backup just to be safe, so I relocked the FV panel, then shut down.

When I restarted again, the login screen looked normal again with the icons for the users.

Voila, problem solved. I have no idea why that worked, but what the heck, try it, it's a lot less painful and less risky than actually turning FV off and turning it back on again. Ha!

> no idea why that worked

Please see the answer linked from my previous post, in particular the second and third screenshots.

Whatever you did caused the operating system to write (update) what's required to the Apple_Boot slice of the disk.

Your experience reaffirms that it's not necessary to disable FileVault.

I wish I would have done this months ago when this problem first appeared, I had simply ignored the Updated needed text because everything worked.

A week ago I started getting a password prompt from apps requesting access to my keychain, but none of my passwords worked. First time I rebooted after that and I could no longer login or decrypt my FileVault. So my only option now is reinstall.

Rgrodevant,

I did the same thing you did, for the same reason. I wanted a single encryption password for the entire volume that's much longer and more complex than the passwords used to authenticate and login the users. I wanted this password not to be linked to any user account. I was getting the same "Update Needed" message underneath the placeholder image used for an unknown user (or perhaps just used for a user image that is not defined).

Thru some Google-fu I can't clearly remember now, I happened across this page:

http://techjournal.318.com/general-technology/filevault-2-part-deux-enter-the-dr agon/

It didn't provide me with the exact solution, but it got me on the right track. It provided what I think is another way to accomplish what you and I accomplished, with the benefit of providing a disk icon and "Disk Password" text to replace the mystery photo icon and "Update Needed" text. However, I didn't want to decrypt and reencrypt the whole hard drive, and I still haven't tried his method, though I think it will work.

Where his article helped me was to turn me on to the wonderful world of "diskutil cs". Typing that command in a terminal window displayed a full list of usage commands, and among them was "changeVolumePassphrase". So here's what I did to ultimately solve my problem. In a terminal windows, logged on as an administrative user, I typed:

diskutil cs list

The resulting output displayed a heirarchy, from top to bottom, of the Logical Volume Group, the Physical Volume, the Logical Volume Family, and finally, the Logical Volume, which is what interests us: specifically, we want the UUID for the Logical Volume. For simplicity I selected the UUID in the terminal window and copied it to the clipboard. I then typed:

diskutil cs changeVolumePassphrase 9F203449-4173-49F9-B62E-C6276A29AC69

...pasting the UUID in from the clipboard. (Don't worry - that UUID above is fake, just in case it matters).

It prompted me for the old passphrase and the new passphrase. In my case I used the same one both times, after which it asked me to repeat the new passphrase as confirmation. After a few short moments of work and a few new lines of output, it confirmed by saying "Finished CoreStorage operation".

I immediately rebooted, and was greeted by a beautiful sight - the disk icon and "Disk Password" text above the password field. Mission accomplished!

I hope this helps you or anyone else hoping to implement whole disk encryption on a Mac using a single password (without a recovery key!) in a nice, polished-looking way vs. the unsightly (and possibly unsettling to users) Update Needed message on the EFI boot screen. In this way the disk encryption password can also be changed without having to decrypt and reencrypt the entire volume, and user passwords are not involved in the FileVault Encryption at all.

We encountered this problem on an AD Bound 10.8.5 iMac and were able to get rid of the "Update Needed" by changing the user's password.

When the user rebooted the "Update Needed" was gone and the user's name was back where it used to be.

rgrodevant wrote:

I intentionally caused this scenario by booting ML via USB through InstallESD.dmg, using Disk Utility to erase and format as journaled/encrypted prior to install.

Perhaps that's what some of you did as well?

The reason I chose to do this, is because I don't want my disk encryption password to be the same as the admin password I'm constantly typing in, and that one single annoyance ended up being the only reason I clung on to Symantec PGP for as long as I did.

So I have a disk encryption password independent of the user accounts as a result.

Once I figured out this workaround, I kicked Symantec to the curb and hope this never gets "fixed" so I don't "have to" go crawling back to that horrible product.

This will never be "fixed", as what you're taking advantage of is an Apple-supported feature called, "Disk Password—based DEK". A description of this, and Filevault 2 in general, can be found here (PDF) (page 29).

Don't worry, you shouldn't need to re-visit Symantec's PGP product again 🙂

All I needed to do was to reset my accounts password and everything was fixed. :)

Thanks for this explanation rgrodevant - I have just done a full re-install and was getting the double login screen.

I too had formatted as journaled/encrypted too prior to recovery.

Turned off filevault as suggested here and restarted all ok now.

I had this exact problem ever since upgrading to Mavericks. The solution for me was to go into Security/Privacy, unlock that screen, then there was a message about "some users have to put in a password to unlock". I clicked on the list of users and there was only one - mine, and it had a check mark next to it. I clicked ok and that message went away and did not come back. i logged out and there is my icon and no more "update needed"! I had ignored this issue for a long time, and I'm so glad i didn't bother to decrypt and reencrypt my entire 1TB SSD!

How do you get to the Security/Privacy screen to unlock if you can't get into the OS?

Thanks for any help!

I had this problem too w/MacOS X Yosemite 10.10.1. I didn’t want to decrypt my FileVault disk, and fortunately I didn’t need to. Interestingly as other users have reported, I did see a message somewhere that a JavaScript update was available & did I want to install it. I said no. I can’t find anywhere to install that update again; it doesn’t show up in the App Store’s update page.

My version of the fix comes from these Apple Discussion Forums, as well as info here: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/152271/user-update-needed-after-updatin g-to-mac-os-x-yosemite

Try the following.

1) Restart your computer. When the screen turns black, immediately hold down Cmd-R to boot to recovery mode. Go to Disk Utility, click your hard drive, and Repair Disk.

2) Restart. Login to your account. Launch Disk Utility. Click your disk & Repair Permissions.

3) Go to Apple menu: System Preferences: Users & Groups. Click your photo, choose a different picture, hit Done so the new picture saves. (In my case I also changed my password, although I’m not sure if that was necessary or not.)

4) Restart. All the Update Needed text over the names was gone, and all pictures came back.

5) Login to your account again. In Apple menu: System Preferences: Users & Groups, change your picture back to what you want. (And if necessary, change your password back to normal).

All seems good.

- Adam

I had this problem after I did a clean install on an attached FireWire disc. After the install completed and the computer had restarted, it was asking for a password but no user was specified. Problem was that I'd done the install on an encrypted disk. The password it was after was the encryption password - though that wasn't obvious from the message on the screen.