Cannot access Desktop & Documents, iCloud Drive?

Question

Cannot access Desktop & Documents, iCloud Drive?

All Mac friends,

I'm new to Macbook. I bought a used Macbook (late 2013). It is running Catalina 10.15. I set up two users for this Macbook, namely, me and the 'System Administrator' (i.e. root). Und user 'me', there is no problem at alll, but if I log in as 'root', I got the following problems simultaneously:

1) Desktop is empty, I cannot create a new folder there and I cannot drop any documents or folder on desktop. When I tried to create a new folder, I got a message 'The operation can't be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code: 8072).

2) If I open 'Finder', on the sidebar I cannot see 'Desktop' and 'Documents'. If I go to 'Finder'-->'Preferences'-->'Sidebar', the square blue boxes in frond of 'Desktop' and 'Documents'. have a '-' sign, after the box there is no icon or description. And it doesn't expand and cannot be checked or unchecked. Others like 'Recents', 'AirDrop' or 'Applications' all have a sqaure box in front of them and I can check or uncheck them.

3) Some Mac users said, the 'Desktop' and 'Documents' problem might be caused by the default setting on 'iCloud Drive', but if I go to 'System Preferences'--> 'Apple ID', the 'iCloud Drive' is greyed out, I cannot see the 'option' and I cannot open it.

As I said, all these problems occur only under 'System Administrator' user, none of them appeared under 'me' user. I searched on Internet for hours, there is no solutions to my case. Thanks in advance for all your help.

Posted on May 23, 2022 10:58 PM

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Answer 1

ivan54

Level 4

2,844 points

May 28, 2022 2:22 PM in response to HeilpraktikerinFrankfurt

Howdy,

By set up 'System Administrator' I assume that means you enabled the root user.

I was able to duplicate some of your issues yesterday, like unable to access the Desktop, error 8072 and the Sidebar oddities.

I tried to take screenshots but they seemed to go nowhere.

I'm thinking it has to do with the restrictions System Integrity Protection (SIP) puts on the root user.

About the root user

From:

About System Integrity Protection on your Mac

Before System Integrity Protection, the root user had no permission restrictions, so it could access any system folder or app on your Mac. Software obtained root-level access when you entered your administrator name and password to install the software. That allowed the software to modify or overwrite any system file or app.

System Integrity Protection includes protection for these parts of the system:

/System

/usr

/bin

/sbin

/var

Apps that are pre-installed with OS X

Note the root user is not located in /Users/root/

but in the hidden folder /private/var/root/

To test this I disabled SIP (not recommended, if you do, don't leave it that way, (now hearing Donna Summers)).

I was still missing the Desktop and Documents folders but was able to create them and add them to the sidebar!

And now screenshots work and land on the Desktop, in the Desktop folder.

I re-enabled SIP and it still seems to be fine.

All that said, you shouldn't need to use root and disabling SIP is not good. You can read all about it in the links above.

ivan

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Answer 2

ivan54

Level 4

2,844 points

May 29, 2022 11:50 AM in response to HeilpraktikerinFrankfurt

Howdy,

With SIP disabled, and logged in as root, try manually creating the Desktop and Documents folders at

/private/var/root/ if they don't exist.

Go (menu) > Go to Folder … > /private/var/root/ (see if those folders are there, if not…)

File > New Folder > Desktop

File > New Folder > Documents

Maybe even restart and log into root after that to insure the system knows those folders exists. It seems those folders may not be automatically created for root like they are with other users.

ivan

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Answer 3

May 28, 2022 11:17 PM in response to ivan54

Hi, Ivan,

thanks for the help and effort. I tried your method, it didn't work out for me, all three mentioned problems are still there . Firstly, I went to 'Recovery Mode' and then disabled SIP by using 'csrutil disable' in the Terminal. But nothing changed. I attached two photos after disabling the SIP. The second one is a screenshot when I was clicking Finder--Go---Documents. Yes, you cannot save screenshot on the desktop, I changed the default saving location to 'Downloads', there I can save or created new files. The problems only exist with 'Desktop' and 'Documents'. The first one is to show that 'iCloud Drive' is still greyed out.

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Answer 4

May 29, 2022 1:52 PM in response to ivan54

Hi, Ivan,

thanks a lot for the continuous help. This time your instruction hits right on the point. When I opened the 'Go to Folder', and typed /private/var/root/, the 'Desktop' and 'Documents' were not there. I followed your instruction and created them, now both of them are back and I can created new folder on Desktop. (I didn't restart the MacBook). I don't know why this happened, maybe I have misused the 'root' user somewhere, any way your advice is very important, namely,

Note the root user is not located in /Users/root/

but in the hidden folder /private/var/root/

Thanks again for the help. I even contacted Apple, the worker online was very nice and friendly, unfortunately he was not competent as you, at last he asked me to bring my 2013 MacBook to Apple store for repairing from experts. Boy, the MacBook only costs 400 Euro.

Also many thanks for this platform and community, where I can meet real experts!

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Answer 5

ivan54

Level 4

2,844 points

May 29, 2022 2:30 PM in response to HeilpraktikerinFrankfurt

Thank you for the kind words (warm fuzzies). Very glad to help.

These are the kind of puzzles that are fun to solve :-)

Enjoy your "new" MacBook!

ivan

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Cannot access Desktop & Documents, iCloud Drive?

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