burntheflame

Q: Another admin above me?

I am the administrator profile on my Air, but I lack permission to write to the disk (specifically installing Adobe Reader). The computer shows 'valuedcustomer' as my username on the disk, but my username is not that. Is there another admin above me that I don't know about?

 

I have done all the troubleshooting concerning Adobe, and exhausted all those avenues, including repairing permissions. This has to be something to do with my user profile. I've noticed 'valuedcustomer' as the name of the disk before, but never been too concerned about it until I found out that that profile (which I don't see and to which I don't have access) is the only profile with all the proper permissions.

 

128GB MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2013)

1.3 GHz Intel Core i5

4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

MacBook Air (11-inch Mid 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), null

Posted on Oct 17, 2015 10:08 AM

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Q: Another admin above me?

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  • by leroydouglas,

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Nov 6, 2015 8:33 AM in response to burntheflame
    Level 7 (23,578 points)
    Notebooks
    Nov 6, 2015 8:33 AM in response to burntheflame

    burntheflame wrote:

     

    When I looked into this, on my User under 'Advanced Options,' I am listed as being in the 'staff' group,

     

    Can you point me to where you are seeing this, how do I get there?

     

    I am the only admin account on my machine, When I look at terminal here is what I see:    ls -la /Users

     

     

    MacBook-Pro:~ leroydouglas$   ls -la /Users

    total 0

    drwxr-xr-x   6 root          admin    204 Sep 30 13:06 .

    drwxr-xr-x  35 root          wheel   1258 Nov  3 17:32 ..

    -rw-r--r--   1 root          wheel      0 Aug 22 15:27 .localized

    drwxr-xr-x+ 11 Guest         _guest   374 Sep 30 13:06 Guest

    drwxrwxrwt  14 root          wheel    476 Sep 30 12:50 Shared

    drwxr-xr-x  63 leroydouglas  staff   2142 Oct 30 13:51 leroydouglas

  • by gusgrave,

    gusgrave gusgrave Nov 7, 2015 4:13 AM in response to burntheflame
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Nov 7, 2015 4:13 AM in response to burntheflame

    burntheflame wrote:

     

    Screen Shot 2015-11-05 at 2.08.57 PM.png

    I don't recognize 'daemon' and my computer was in a repair place once, so I'm thinking that it's probably the hidden account you're talking about. That's probably why my account is named 'valuedcustomer,' too, because I'd never name my account something like that (obviously).

    Sorry to keep you waiting so long, I have been busy these past days. So, here are the facts my friend:

     

    The reason you see the warning is most likely based on the fact that it is the first time you've issued a sudo command. Otherwise this could be an indication that your computer is being managed "above" you, this could be the case IF this is a work computer (and you have an IT dept.), or if you were a student and this was a "borrowed" unit. Though I find that highly doubtful.

     

    Now, the whoami command tells you that the user you are currently logged in as has the alias or "short name" "valued customer". Your current users "user-alias" IS "valuedcustomer", this is who you are logged in as and that is a fact that cannot be changed. The pwd ~ command tells you which your home folder is, your home folder is located at /Users/valuedcustomer. Again, this is  the account you are signed into, it might display as Justin ..... in the user preferences, that is irrelevant, your are currently using the MBA as "valuedcustomer".

     

    Further, the dscl command lists all users on your laptop, the only users that are not "Default" is "Daycare" and "valuedcustomer". The rest of the users should be there by default, so don't mess with them. If the "daycare" account was created by you or you know who created it and it should be there, then do not mess with that either. This is the only other user account that could be a "hidden administrator", though this is only true if you do not know where the account came from.

     

    You can create a new user account which must have administrative rights, then sign in as that user and then use sudo (which makes you and administrator) to change the name of your home folder to whatever you want (sudo mv /Users/valuedcustomer /Users/anyNameYouWant), then you would use the advances settings under system preferences/users and groups to change the path to your users home folder so that it now points to "/Users/anyNameYouWant". You can then change your users alias from "valuedcustomer" to "anyNameYouWant". This would get the name-issue corrected, though does not really matter to the problem with administrative rights.

     

    Here's what you can do, check to see that the only other user is not running any processes:

    sudo ps -u Daycare

     

    If there are running processes, you can kill them (destroying any unsaved work that user might have though)

    sudo pkill -u lnuadmin

     

    If Daycare had processes running you could kick that out of the running system (10.10 and higher):

    export pn=`ps awwwwux | awk ‘/Daycare/ && /loginwind[o]w/ { print $2 }'`

    sudo kill -9 $pn

     

    You can also make sure that you are in fact an administrator (replacing userAliasHere with your current alias):

    dscl . -list /Groups GroupMembership | grep userAliasHere

     

    If you are not an admin you can sudo add yourself:

    sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a usernametoadd -t user admin

     

    After all this, reboot and it should work. Though this is a large task, especially if you do not have some "terminal skills" and you can actually break things. You could just create a new user account, make that user an administrator and move whatever files you need over to that user, correcting permissions and then just delete the "valued customer account". The result would basically be the same.

     

    Best regards

  • by burntheflame,

    burntheflame burntheflame Nov 9, 2015 5:11 PM in response to leroydouglas
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 9, 2015 5:11 PM in response to leroydouglas

    When I go to the Adobe Flash Player Installer, 'get info,' under Sharing and Permissions

  • by burntheflame,

    burntheflame burntheflame Nov 9, 2015 5:20 PM in response to burntheflame
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 9, 2015 5:20 PM in response to burntheflame

    I fixed it! Thanks for everyone's help, it has been an ordeal! When going in to fix my account full name and home directory from 'valuedcustomer' to 'Justin,' I deleted 'staff' from the 'Group' field, which fixed all of my permission and the Flash update installed! Woohoo! I'm elated to be done with this problem.

  • by burntheflame,

    burntheflame burntheflame Nov 9, 2015 6:26 PM in response to burntheflame
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 9, 2015 6:26 PM in response to burntheflame

    Screen Shot 2015-11-09 at 7.19.35 PM.png

    Oh wait I lied. Ugh.

    It got most of the way through the install, then said it couldn't install. This time it didn't mention permissions, but it won't install for some unspecified reason... However, even changing my group to 'admin,' changing my account name and then changing it back to see, I can't do it!

  • by rccharles,

    rccharles rccharles Nov 9, 2015 6:45 PM in response to burntheflame
    Level 6 (8,486 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    Nov 9, 2015 6:45 PM in response to burntheflame

    I create another admin user and see if that goes any better.

     

    Try repair permissions. /Applications/Utilities/Disk Copy

     

    You may want to backup your data and reinstall.  Too much sweat and little progres for me.

     

    R

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