Apple shambles

[Guest]

Just got a new macbook pro and a mac mini.
setup the macbook and choose the user name "Admin", set the password and got in.

Turned it off and the later tried to boot up. But the password is not recognised and I am locked out. A bit of googling reveals that apple big sur has a problem.

So, its likely I will have to make a usb key and reinstall. Jesus it would be quicker to get a hackintosh working.

Moving on to the mac mini, bluetooth is all over tne place. That m1 might be getting hig praise everywhere ,but from what I have so far it is all a load of shite. Really amazed at this. Its all going back to Apple.

[muzines]

Just got a new macbook pro and a mac mini.
setup the macbook and choose the user name "Admin", set the password and got in.

Turned it off and the later tried to boot up. But the password is not recognised and I am locked out. A bit of googling reveals that apple big sur has a problem.

So, its likely I will have to make a usb key and reinstall.

A poor user experience is of course not good, particularly on a brand new device.

The issue you refer to seems to be a bug in the Big Sur beta that has regressed into the public release (nothing to do with you choosing "Admin" as a user name). Googling this shows a variety of fixes to fix the administrator status on the account and have the password working again, none of which require a reinstall.

Hopefully by the time I transition across the OS will be a bit more stable, I'm always wary of new OS releases, particularly if they have been changing a lot of things. As I mentioned in other Mac threads, if you don't need it a new machine right now, you'll have an easier life waiting a bit before moving to the latest release hardware and software.

[rACed2]

Got my wife an MBP 13” for Xmas. No issues whatsoever so far.

[Sam Spoons]

Is that an intel or M1 powered MBP? And is it on Big Sur, Currys are currently selling new 2019/20 MacBooks with both Mojave and Catalina installed?

[rACed2]

Is that an intel or M1 powered MBP? And is it on Big Sur, Currys are currently selling new 2019/20 MacBooks with both Mojave and Catalina installed?

M1 so Big Sur.

[Guest]

Hi.
As posted recently, my new MacBook Pro is locked out due to some Apple bug in Big Sur.

I got it Friday, ran the initial setup and once I logged out, it had locked me out.

Seems to be an Apple Problem.

I did try following the steps kindly suggested by Desmonds internet link, which I don't think it an official Apple response to their failing. Anyway, it does not work. I went into disk utility in recovery mode to get the name of the drive and tried to run the "rm /Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.applesetupdone."
but to no avail. It gives the no such file or directory response.

https://appletoolbox.com/cant-enter-you ... to-fix-it/

I cannot run the reinstall Big Sur option because it needs internet and I had not setup the Wifi. The computer does not have an Ethernet.

So back to square one. Does anyone have any idea of how I can get it working?

I really have to take this opportunity to warn people away from Apple.
They have big announcements, fill the internet with hype and just look at the state of the machine they sold. It really is a disgrace.

To say that I am fuming is an understatement.

If you ever had your doubts, and are reconsidering moving back to Apple, please take my experience as a reminder of how bad they can get it wrong.
During research I came across this and thought, man that does not look good.
https://www.techradar.com/how-to/macos- ... mon-issues

[Chet Leeway]

Within 30 days of purchase, use your short-term right of rejection?

[muzines]

Seems to be an Apple Problem.

Yes, it's a bug, and will no doubt be fixed fairly quickly.

I did try following the steps kindly suggested by Desmonds internet link, which I don't think it an official Apple response to their failing. Anyway, it does not work. I went into disk utility in recovery mode to get the name of the drive and tried to run the "rm /Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.applesetupdone."
but to no avail. It gives the no such file or directory response.

Is your drive actually called "Macintosh HD"?
Do you have the /var/db folders?
You might not be able to find the file if the path is not correct, so make sure you're in the right place etc, if in doubt, do it one step at a time ie cd /Volumes, cd "./Macintosh HD", cd ./var, cd ./db etc
ls -al and look for that file

Does anyone have any idea of how I can get it working?

No more than the people who have already posted solutions online, I just googled for it and the fix. The fix is listed on multiple sites. There might be others - as this is not a problem I'm facing that's as far as I went with it.

I really have to take this opportunity to warn people away from Apple.
They have big announcements, fill the internet with hype and just look at the state of the machine they sold. It really is a disgrace.

Don't assume one poor experience is everyone's experience, it isn't. Bugs happen, it's the nature of software development, however hard you try, and some are more annoying than others. This is by no means limited to Apple.

The thing to do is try to get the published fix working, and you should be all good.

[merlyn]

I'm familiar with the rm command from Linux. You can't use a space as is in a filename. To use a space you have to use a backslash before the space to tell the shell 'this is not a usual space'. So Macintosh HD would be Macintosh\ HD when refering to that path on the command line.

Handy trick :

Use Tab completion. To avoid typos you can use the Tab key to fill in paths. So say I want to remove a file .example from my home directory. I can type

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$ rm /

Then hit Tab twice. Be very careful with rm as executing the command above would wipe your system! By hitting Tab twice I get this :

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bin/        .cache/     etc/        lib/        lost+found/ opt/        root/       sbin/       sys/        usr/        
boot/       dev/        home/       lib64/      mnt/        proc/       run/        srv/        tmp/        var/

So it's working as a simple file browser. Now I can add

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$ rm /h

and hitting Tab fills in home. Now I hit Tab twice again and get

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DR-07/   merlyn/  SiriusB/

Typing

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$ rm /home/m

and hitting Tab fills in /home/merlyn/ Now I do

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$ rm /home/merlyn/.e

and hit Tab. Now and only now I press return and .example is gone. Using Tab means you won't get 'no such file or directory'

@desmond You don't need ./ to change directory.

[muzines]

I'm familiar with the rm command from Linux. You can't use a space as is in a filename. To use a space you have to use a backslash before the space to tell the shell 'this is not a usual space'. So Macintosh HD would be Macintosh\ HD when refering to that path on the command line.

The instructions linked to surround the drive name in quotes to get around this (and I also did the same).
If the instructions were followed, I expect the procedure would work.
The reason it didn't work I believe was that he was likely not following the instructions and/or getting the path name wrong (he quoted it wrong above too), so I broke it down to try and encourage doing it correctly.

@desmond You don't need ./ to change directory.

I know. I was doing it for a specific reason to avoid any conflicts when it was being typed. The instructions I give for others aren't necessarily what I would do, but then I have the understanding of what I'm doing...

[Sam Spoons]

Is that an intel or M1 powered MBP? And is it on Big Sur, Currys are currently selling new 2019/20 MacBooks with both Mojave and Catalina installed?

M1 so Big Sur.

[Sam Spoons]

Hi.
As posted recently, my new MacBook Pro is locked out due to some Apple bug in Big Sur.

So back to square one. Does anyone have any idea of how I can get it working?

The first thing to do in normal times would be to take it to see a 'Genius'* at your local Apple Store. You also have at least 30 days phone support**. My experience of Apple is that they are mostly (but not quite always) very good at fixing things.

* I think 'Genius' is a bit presumptuous but they usually have somebody who can sort the issue out, and the assorted connectors, adapters and software required.

** IMO, given the price you pay for Apple devices that should be lifetime phone support...

[Guest]

Hi Desmond. Merlyn,
Thanks for the tips.

I navigated into the directory as advised and it worked in there by just using the rm command. Now I ran the setup again and setup another admin account under my Christian name.

It logs in ok, but the original wonky admin account is still listed under users and I cannot delete it or change its password. Have you any suggestions for that as I would like to clean it up.

Cheers.

[merlyn]

I take it the GUI way didn't work. There's two parts to this -- removing the user account and removing the user's directory. The first part uses the utility dscl and the second part would use rm -r the -r meaning 'recursive' which is required to remove directories.

Both will need sudo in front of them I would think.

Googling 'macos delete user terminal' showed up a few guides. I would suggest you understand what you're doing rather than copy and paste commands into the terminal.

A safe use of dscl is

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$ dscl . list /Users

which will show all the users on the machine, including a lot of system ones. To hide them use

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$ dscl . list /Users | grep -v '_'

The vertical line is a pipe which pipes the output into grep, a string matching utility and -v means 'invert-match' on the underscore '_' I have access to a Mac at the moment and that worked.

[Guest]

Hi, Just an update.

That wonky admin account is still listed and I cannot delete it or reset the password. I tried enabling root user and deleting it but to no avail.

Anyone got any ideas?

Other than that the machine seems ok. Reaper is running fine, but hey it also runs great on my other dell laptop that I got this year.

I really think that Apple should be criticised when they make such monumental cockups. There was no word about any of this when they made their massive launch for the M1 late last year.

[merlyn]

I tried enabling root user ...

I don't think you need to do that. The account was called 'Admin' ? If so try this at your own risk :

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$ sudo dscl . delete /Users/Admin

It'll ask for your password. That's the password you're logged in with, not for the account you're deleting.

[Sam Spoons]

Hi, Just an update.

That wonky admin account is still listed and I cannot delete it or reset the password. I tried enabling root user and deleting it but to no avail.

Anyone got any ideas?

Other than that the machine seems ok. Reaper is running fine, but hey it also runs great on my other dell laptop that I got this year.

I really think that Apple should be criticised when they make such monumental cockups. There was no word about any of this when they made their massive launch for the M1 late last year.

Yes they should but they are far from the only developers who allow bugs to creep into their software.

[Guest]

Hi Merlyn,

Many thanks for the help.

I tried that and it returned an error.

Here is is:
<main> delete status: eDSPermissionError
<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14120 (eDSPermissionError)

After a quick search that seems to be something that has been around a while, but I haven't seen anyone solve that one.

[merlyn]

No, no idea. That looks like an Apple thing. dscl is an Apple thing. Linux uses the 'does what it says on the tin' userdel or deluser if you're on Debian.

You did disable root after you were finished?

[Guest]

Hi Merlyn,

Many thanks for the help. I did disable the root again : )