User status changed from Admin to Standard after macOS reinstallation on my iMac.

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Level 1

5 points

User status changed from Admin to Standard after macOS reinstallation on my iMac.

During an update to the above recent MacOS we had a power blackout. When power returned my Mac would not complete the restart. I rebooted into Recovery Mode and did Reinstall OS From Internet. All good after that except I am now a "Standard User" and NOT an "Admin User" as I was before. There is NO listing for an Admin User, only me. As a result I cannot change my User Details to Admin or Add Another User as Admin as there appears to be no Admin User Name nor Password to enter at the prompt. Any help or advice would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks and cheers! Sam

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iMac 21.5″

Posted on Aug 13, 2024 9:14 PM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

Level 10

122,306 points

Aug 15, 2024 6:47 PM in response to sam b.

sam b. wrote:

AS suggested I quit Terminal and then also in between each Terminal Command entry you’ve suggested. ALL returned “No Such File Or Directory”. I thank you for your considered ideas but wonder if I should not just bite the bullet and restore from a Time Machine backup? Or do a Disk First Aid, first???

Unless you typed the first directory (Macintosh HD - Data) incorrectly, it should most definitely not return "No Such File or Directory." If you entered that incorrectly, none of the others would work.

You can enter

cd /Volumes/Mac

Hit Tab, It should fill out Macintosh HD and pause. Type a backslash (\), space, and Tab and it should fill out the full path to the Data volume.

Then type pri and hit Tab, then v and Tab and d and Tab

Then hit return and it should show that you are in that directory. If you enter:

pwd

It will show the full path, /Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data/private/var/db

With that all successful, try to remove .AppleSetupDone

rm .AppleSetupDone

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,306 points

Aug 14, 2024 10:37 PM in response to sam b.

Let’s see if we can walk the directory tree. First, note that there are spaces around the -

cd "/Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data

Second, type

cd private

Third,

cd var

Fourth,

cd db

If you get that far, try

rm .AppleSetupDone

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Answer 3

sam b. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 16, 2024 4:15 PM in response to Barney-15E

Interesting. After running First Aid and a restart I got back to the initial Setup screen where I re-installed from Time Machine and made me an Admin and added another "me" as a substitute Admin as well as suggested by some in the Community. After work today I'll do another restart to see if those changes hold, but let me thank you a whole heap for trying to navigate me through this malaise. I'll repost later on and if all goes smoothly I'll mark this solved and try to add points to you for your help. Thanks once again! Cheers!

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,306 points

Aug 14, 2024 8:22 PM in response to sam b.

While in Terminal on Recovery, what is the result of

ls -al /Volumes

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Answer 5

Owl-53

Level 10

103,147 points

Aug 14, 2024 1:05 AM in response to sam b.

sam b. wrote:

During an update to the above recent MacOS we had a power blackout. When power returned my Mac would not complete the restart. I rebooted into Recovery Mode and did Reinstall OS From Internet. All good after that except I am now a "Standard User" and NOT an "Admin User" as I was before. There is NO listing for an Admin User, only me. As a result I cannot change my User Details to Admin or Add Another User as Admin as there appears to be no Admin User Name nor Password to enter at the prompt. Any help or advice would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks and cheers! Sam

From a fellow Contributor @Barney-15E

Restarting Setup Assistant to create Admi… - Apple Community

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Answer 6

sam b. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 14, 2024 7:22 PM in response to Owl-53

Thank you PRP_53 for your sage advice. I tried the Barney-15E process and no luck. Firstly after booting into Recovery and selecting disk named DATA in Disk First Aid, I noticed that there was no MOUNT Button, only UNMOUNT. Assuming it was already mounted I quit Disk First Aid and ran the script listed from TERMINAL. The response was No Such File Or Directory. After restart I'm back to where I was before. I appreciate your help, so if you had any other insights I would be most grateful to you to read them. For now thanks again and cheers! Sam P.S. I might go to the post that Barney-15E wrote and ask there too.

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Answer 7

sam b. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 14, 2024 8:51 PM in response to Barney-15E

Excuse the long winded reply:

total 24

drwxr-xr-x 7 root wheel 528 15 Aug 03:29.

drwxr-xr-x 21 root wheel 672 30 Jul 10:45..

drwx——— 2 root wheel 88 15 Aug 03:28 .fseventsd

drwxrwxr-x@ 15 root wheel 578 15 Aug 03:22 Backup 2018

drwxr-xr-x 20 root wheel 640 30 Jul 11:00 Macintosh HD

drwxr-xr-x@ 37 root wheel 1184 8 Aug 09:01 Macintosh HD - Data

drwxrwxr-x@ 16 _unknown _unknown 612 28 Oct 2023 Sam’s Pix

lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1 15 Aug 03:28 macOS Base System -> /

-bash-3.2#

I hope this makes sense to you. It’s all Greek to me. Thank you again for your generosity of spirit in trying to help me. CHEERS!!!!

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Answer 8

sam b. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 14, 2024 10:59 PM in response to Barney-15E

cd “/Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data <return>

nothing

cd private <return>

nothing

cd var <return>

nothing

cd db <return>

nothing

rm .AppleSetupDone <return>

nothing

By “nothing” I mean there was no reply. Once again thanks!

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Answer 9

John Galt

Level 10

155,822 points

Aug 15, 2024 5:52 AM in response to sam b.

Nothing would be the correct and expected result if those commands were entered properly.

In other words if the .AppleSetupDone file did not exist, Terminal would respond with No such file or directory.

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Answer 10

sam b. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 15, 2024 5:07 PM in response to Barney-15E

AS suggested I quit Terminal and then also in between each Terminal Command entry you’ve suggested. ALL returned “No Such File Or Directory”. I thank you for your considered ideas but wonder if I should not just bite the bullet and restore from a Time Machine backup? Or do a Disk First Aid, first???

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Answer 11

sam b. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 15, 2024 6:49 PM in response to Barney-15E

I think I typed cd <space> <quote mark><right slash> Volumes<right slash>Macintosh<space>HD<space><dash><space>Data<quote mark><return> Does this read correctly? Again thanks for your time……

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Answer 12

sam b. Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 15, 2024 8:45 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks mate, just got back from work. last night before going to bed (Aussie time) I put on Disk First Aid with the warning at the end of scan “inode (id 1703982) has the compression bsdflag but doesn’t have the compression xattr” twice for the same file ID number, for what all that is worth. First Aid called the scan “successful”. Just now I tried your new scripts with the TAB key and got as far as “d and Tab” and then no response. So I tried <return> and got in reply “no such file or directory”. In the above script I tried to manually type in “db” and then Tab key and just a new empty line. I didn’t get to the pwd nor the rm .AppleSetupDone commands. Seems like we may be getting closer? Thank you sir!

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