No fix for error: An unexpected error occurred while signing in. AMD-Action:authenticate. When trying to download Keynote and Pages updates.

If you deleted or moved the folder /Users/Shared, restore it from a backup.

I used the Advanced Options on my user account to move my home directory

That would only cause a different folder to be used as your home folder. It wouldn't move the /Users folder or anything inside it.

What you want is for a folder on the secondary volume to be your home folder. Now you have something like "Users/you" at the top level of the secondary volume. Move "you" to the top level and then repeat the step you took already. After that, delete Users on the SSD and also the symbolic link at /Users. Restart. Restore the Shared folder from a backup.

Linc,

Like WildWing4 I boot from a small SSD and I keep my home folder on a larger hard drive. But I accomplished this by putting symbolic links (or maybe just aliases, not sure) in SSD/Users to HD/Users/you, HD/Users/Shared, and HD/Users/Guest. I did not use the Advanced Options; it set the Home directory to the symbolic link SSD/Users/you.

Like WildWing4, several apps in my El Capitan Mac suddenly starting requiring me to log in with my Apple ID, and then giving the AMD error. In fact, I got that error trying to log in to the App Store. However, I was still able log in to the iTunes Store, so Apple has definitely done something strange to the OS.

At any rate, using your hint I solved the problem (at least I hope so) by deleting the alias SSD/Users/Shared and then copying HD/Users/Shared to SSD/Users. I did not relocate my home folder to the root of HD. That would have defeated the purpose for my set up.

If you think I will have messed something up with this approach, I would appreciate your advice. I also wanted to give you feedback and to thank you for your response to WildWing4.

I have an update on how to handle having a home folder at a location not on the boot drive. I had to make an additional changes to what I said above in order to get everything working. Based upon what my El Capitan has been doing, I have a hypothesis on what Apple did to cause this problem, and that could help with our various work-arounds.

In the current version of El Capitan (10.11.1), Apple hardwired the App Store to look for the folder "Shared" on the boot drive (at boot/users). If there is a symlink to another drive, the App Store will not recognize it. The AMD error occurs if "Shared" is not found.

Other Apple processes also look for the folder "Shared", but they expect it to be at the same location specified for the home folder in the Users and Groups System preference discussed in this thread. If there is a symlink for Shared at the specified location, the other Apple apps honor the symlink. Thus if the folder "Shared" is on the boot drive, and there is a symlink to it on the non-boot drive, the Apple apps will follow it.

So, for those of us who have relocated the home folder, whether via a symlink or via Users and Groups, here's what I believe may work until Apple fixes this.

1. The home folder can be relocated either by a symllink at boot/Users or via the Users and Groups preference.

2. The folder "Shared" must be located at boot/Users.

3. There needs to be a "Shared" symlink in the folder containing the home folder.

Note: If you wish the non-boot drive to be bootable, then it must as well have an actual folder "Shared" in addition to the symlink "Shared".

When I moved the folder "Shared" back to the boot drive, but before I performed step 3, my computer would crash about twice a day, presumably from Apple processes not able to find "Shared". Also, Spotlight didn't crash but all searches came empty. All is well since I performed step 3 although it has been only 1 day so there is still time for something else to go wrong.

Hi there, I seem to have the same problem and getting the same error message, and indeed I have placed my home folder in my HDD drive and left an alias in my SSD which appears to be the source of the problem according to your explanation. Can you please explain in a little details the steps I need to take to fix the problem as I am unfamiliar with how to move home folders in El Capitan. Thanks a lot

Hi there, I seem to have the same problem and getting the same error message, and indeed I have placed my home folder in my HDD drive and left an alias in my SSD which appears to be the source of the problem according to your explanation. Can you please explain in a little details the steps I need to take to fix the problem as I am unfamiliar with how to move home folders in El Capitan. Thanks a lot

This is bothersome. All OS X versions have worked up to this. A while ago I simply moved my entire /Users to HD/Users, and BOOT/Users is a symlink to HD/Users. (BOOT being a small ssd)

Everything works for me currently since updating 2 days ago (I had to for Xcode 7.3), except App Store updates are fail.

Is there a way to specifically post this as a bug for Apple engineers responsible for the App Store? As that seems to be the only thing that needs fixing in El Capitan, if you moved your whole /Users off boot drive like I did. And short of replacing my ssd with a bigger one, I have no space for having /Users/Shared on my boot.

I upgraded directly from Yosemite to El Cap 10.11.4. And I see this thread was for 10.11.1, so this bug remain unfixed through 3 versions.