Unapproved Caller

I must concur with those who identified the HDD cable as the source of the problem. My Macbook Pro (mid-2010) started showing the "unapproved caller" message about two weeks ago, associated with the same symptoms that others described. Tried everything from reparing disk permissions, Maverick reinstall to removing var/folders/--all to no avail. I was skeptical at first about blaming the HDD cable but once I had swapped it out for a new one the problem was gone--all back to normal! I had replaced my Hard Drive earlier this year, so it is possible that the cable got damaged in the process.

Since people come up with very different solutions to the "unapproved caller" phenomenon, either the "unapproved caller" message flags multiple, very different problems (seems unlikely but who knows ....), or some of the suggested remedies won't hold up. Keep reporting in if your solution worked or failed to keep its promise! A word from Apple on this issue would be nice too....

I had the same issue on my 2009 Macbook Pro

What happened:

- alerts appeared

- tried repairing disk and permissions with Disk Utility - no issues present - reboot

- alert went away for a couple of days, then came back, rebooted in Safe Mode.

- tried repairing permissions - still no issues present

- had trouble accessing login. Access was intermittent.

- When I was finally able to login, saw that I had only 180 MB of free space, cleared 2GB of space

- issue came back, and HD (somehow) refilled again with trashed items

- several times hung on gray screen, was not able to get to login screen.

- after several attempts, was finally able to boot back up in SM

- tried to reinstall Mavericks on the computer, but didn't have enough room.

- used different computer and installed Mavericks onto a 16GB USB flash drive

- used as USB flash drive as start-up drive with internal hard drive as slave drive.

- able to access the hard drive, backup 10 GB of files and then remove files off of internal hard drive

- reinstalled Mavericks onto HD and now works fine.

Hi abstert,

I actually think you're answer sounds pretty likely. However, this started happening to one of our Mavericks MBPs in the last few days which was in fact scheduled for an SSD update. I thought that after installing the fresh new SSD this problem would disappear... unfortunately it hasn't so I still don't really know what the issue is unfortunately.

Maybe I'll try a new HDD cable... not sure what else to try 😟

Justin

hi franlu,

all still ok after the mavericks reinstall? I was actually thinking of rolling back to ML if a reinstall of Mavericks didn't work!

No issues. It's been about two months since the re-install. I am unsure whether it was because of the lack of free space or a corrupt OS, but both changes seem to have resolved the problem.

ok cool, just in the midst of the reinstall now so here's hoping! Thanks for the quick reply 🙂

Sure.. let me know how it goes for you.

I must concur with the NEW HDD CABLE as the fix that DaniloMR, brewer365, dextah02, Bilalama, etc all talk about.

This unapproved caller/securityagent message was the first sign of the problem. It also included that Spotlight stopped working, loginwindow (not responding), the keys for display and keyboard lighting stopped responding.

I had tried most of the other attempted fixes mentioned in these discussions with nothing being permanent.

I also ordered the cable for my Macbook Pro (mid-2009) from ifixit and replaced it yesterday. No problems since. I was skeptical that this would be the fix, just not what I would expect.

Thanks.

unfortunately the reinstall of Mavericks hasn't fixed the issue... maybe I am going to have to find somewhere selling the HDD cables

I got my HDD cable from Ifixit. Their website also provides detailed illustrated descriptions on how to change the cable for each computer model. Incidentally, it's been more than a week since I swapped mine and clearly, this fixed the issue. Everything is back to normal.

Sorry the Mavericks install didn't work.

I wonder if the "unapproved caller" alert is a general error message for any number of issues (hardware or software related)?

After Mavericks reinstallation didn't help, I decided to give rolling back to Mountain Lion a go... 36 hours later all is well still... if all stays the same it would appear that in fact it is Mavericks that may well be the issue.

Certainly in my case, this issiue did not appear until after upgrading to Mavericks

Hi folks!

I am having the same stuff going on, in a MBPro retina (1st ed.)

Thanks for posting, as I now feel confident that stuff in etc/var/folders (if I recall the path correctly)

is the culprit.

I was having disk space trouble, and manually removed the stuff in there. I have done that many times, but this time there was some odd behaviour. Dunno if it was the order I did it, in relationship to closing all apps...

Off course this happens when I am having a very important project on my dearest laptop, and off course I have... Yes! No backup. Sheesh, i feel so dumb.

So, tomorrow I will have an additional MacBook, and will buy a thunderbolt cable. I hope it is easy to find, as I recall mac shop folks not understanding what I was asking for, when I bought a Fw to FW cable :)

I might as well go to a mac shop, there's one just around the corner.

Is there anything special about getting to that folder trough disk target mode?

I hope it is just:

- Start fresh and happy mac

- Link sick mac with cable

- Start it in target mode

- do a option+shift+g and write the logical path:

"/Volumes/targetdisk/etc/var/folders/"

Is there anyone that can confirm/correct if I'm wrong, please?

Thanks! I'll post a update obviously!

FOR THE RECORD:

- I started in recovery mode a first time

- repaired the main volume's permitions, some small thing were fixed

- then I had it repair that volume... Strangely, it had stopped with an error, something like "the repair process has failed due to a process that has unexpectedly stopped".

- I restarted, redid the volume repairing in recovery mode: all fine

- Tried my luck by restarting normally, same error (main topic of this thread)

- Restarted, then re-repaired the volume: all fine (confirmation of confirmation)

- zapped the PRAM (could be silly in this context, I know)

- no luck!

- was happily surfing in recovery mode, and found this thread: an excellent feeling to have that possibility

A big high five to the man that got that idea!!!

Cheers!

Oh my goodness! It worked!

I went to the mac store around the corner of my office, asked to be able to lend a Thunderbolt cable for some target disk emergency thing I needed to perform. The girl that helped me was surprised and amused by this odd thing I would do.

I left the place in less than 10 minutes, after performing the above steps.

However, the path above was wrong... See the full procedure below:

- Start fresh and happy Mac

- Link sick Mac with a thunderbolt cable to the fresh Mac

- Start the sick Mac in target disk mode by pressing and holding the 'T' key right after pressing the power button

- In the fresh Mac's Finder, do a option+shift+g and write the logical path to the folder called 'folders' on the target disk

/Volumes/***/etc/var/folders/

--> replace *** with the name of the target disk

You can find the target disk's name by first filling the following in the step above:

/Volumes/

If your disk has a space in its name, rename the disk like I did to avoid a more complicated procedure

- The folder "folders" should by this time show up in Finder

- Delete all that is in that folder (these files are only temporary files, and will be recreated when your Mac restarts, as it will have nothing there)

- Empty the trash

- eject the target disk in Finder

- unlink the two computers

- shut down the hopefully not sick anymore Mac

- start this Mac again

--> if all went as in my case, you should have your Mac starting as if nothing annoying happened.

How great is that???

Sounds to me like my earlier comment was the right answer:

abstert Santa Clara, CA

The correct way to fix the "Unapproved Caller SecurityAgent may only be invoked by Apple Software" error is to delete the contents of the

/var/folders/ directory.

Most users experience this error when trying to have the system use elevated privileges like unlocking the System Preferences to make changes. This occurs on systems that have recently been upgraded to Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks.

The upgrade process fails to complete a specific task that is meant to remove cached files from that location. There is a Launch Daemon at "

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.bsd.dirhelper.plist " that is meant to remove the files from the /var/folders location every 3 days.

Removing the contents of this folder does not affect the system as they are only cached files. This will only need to be done once, then a RESTART of the system and the Unapproved Caller error will go away.