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Short name ROOT

Please help,

I have Ibook g3, it was working fine, and I was running 10.4.3 so I wanted to do updated it through apple, but I forgot the password of my user name. So I restarted from tiger, then I reset the password and I updated the system, when I restarted, I couldn’t restart . I follow some vague advices, and I restart with pressing on (s) as I remembered, and I wrote codes that took me to the root user or super user, so now I can see the desktop empty except from the hard disk. There is no dock or anything that I can change in the preference. There is admin user, and I can’t see my user name in the list of user names even thou that I can see it in the folder called users.
So I tried to create a new user name and name it with the same user name, but the computer refused. So I add a new user name and tried to switch to this new user name, but it always go to this admin with SHORT NAME ROOT.

Now would you please guide me to go back to my computer?

There is no NetInfo Manager in application utility!

Thanks for your patience

G4 and IBook G3, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on May 23, 2007 1:36 PM

Reply
7 replies

May 23, 2007 7:06 PM in response to Rublevandre

Can you get logged in to any account? If so, then in Finder, click on Help and select Mac Help, or just type ⌘?

Enter search terms reset admin password and select the top entry. Find the part that tells how to reset the admin password using the Tiger installer disks.

Once the admin password has been reset, download the OS 10.4.9 combo update and run it. You can get it here.

Then run software update to make sure any security patches issued after the combo update was issued are, in fact, applied.

Once all that is done, you should be able to login as an admin user and delete any unwanted accounts from System Preferences > Accounts.

Let us know how things go for you, like, do you now have NetInfo Manager in /Applications/Utilities.

May 24, 2007 5:10 PM in response to j.v.

Thanks for your help but I’m still stuck with (Admin user “ROOT”
I manage to update to 10.4.9 combo, through apple.
I restarted from the DVD tiger,
I repaired the permission, and there is nothing wrong with the disk.
When I click on reset password, it give me options for which user, but I can’t see my original user, it shows me
1- admin user (Root)
2-test (which I created it as a test.
and there is still no netinfo manager in Utility/application. but there is something called ODBC administrator, when I click on it, it said that it is correpted and it can't open.
How can I log in to my original user, and get out of this root user?


G4 and IBook G3 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

May 25, 2007 7:18 PM in response to Rublevandre

Unless someone else frequenting this forum has a better idea, you may be at the point of having to reinstall the OS, using the "archive and install" option. Then reapply the combo update and subsequently issued security updates.

If you elect to go this route, if you can somehow get all your /Users folders backed up first, I would do so. Then, you could NOT import existing user and network settings during the reinstall, and just copy all your /Users' documents, folders, and preferences into the aprropriate /Users folder after you recreate the user accounts. Once things are working again, delete the "Previous Systems" folder at the root level on your hard drive.

Before you go to these drastic measures, does anyone else have any better ideas?

May 28, 2007 4:51 PM in response to Tom Keep

thanks,
the problem, the computer can't see external hard disk, I mounted an external hard disk, but I can't click on it.
I belive the main problem is that I'm in (root user) and I can't acces or write, just read, and I can't switch to another account.

I do can my original user in the user folder.

but I belive first I have to get out of the ROOT user to another one, and I belive the way to do so is through starting with pressing comant and S then write something, but I don't know what to write to get out from the root.

May 29, 2007 7:04 PM in response to Rublevandre

Depressing ⌘s during system bootup brings you up in a command-line environment with root privileges in single-user mode. You can't make yourself another user because you are in single-user mode.

Like it or not, with the amount of time that has transpired so far and you are still broken, I would try to backup all the documents, files, and folders in all the users' folders and just reinstall the OS, if I were you. Your problem sounds reminiscent of a time when I ran a too-old version of TechTool Pro on my Tiger installation, it went to "fix" problems and landed up hosing my hard drive so badly that I could only salvage about 75%-80% of my users' documents, and I landed up just zeroing the hard drive and reinstalling a fresh new everything, and copying the salvaged users' documents back in after the fact.

Can you borrow another Macintosh computer? If so, connect the two computers together using a firewire cable. Boot up your iBook G3 in target disk mode by starting up your iBook then immediately press and hold down the "T" key until a gold-colored FireWire icon on a blue background appears on the iBook's screen. Your iBook should appear as a hard disk icon on the second computer. Copy all the files from all the User folders off of your iBook G3.

Then reinstall the OS on your iBook using the "archive and install" option, and do not import user or network settings. Recreate them manually. Then delete the Previous System folder that is at the root level like /Users, /Applications, etc., are. Next, apply the 10.4.9 combo update and security patches issued after that. Finally, copy all of your users' documents, files, and folders from the borrowed computer back into the appropriate recreated user accounts on your rebuilt iBook G3. This is easily done by rebooting the borrowed computer into target disk mode, by holding down the "T" key, as before.

If you don't have a whole bunch of third-party software installed on your iBook, and you aren't averse to reinstalling all your third-party software, too, then you might even want to consider doing an "erase/reformat" install of the OS, rather than an "archive and install". Then you will be "just like new".

This might take you several hours to do, but you've already been broken for five days. And, if you are missing important applications and executables like NetInfo Manager, it is hard to say what other important OS files, binaries, and applications might be damaged or missing, particularly if reapplying the combo update didn't seem to help.

Short name ROOT

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