'No such file' when running rm AppleSetupDone from single-user mode
I'm in High Sierra (10.13.6) and recently I renamed my account in Users & Group. Now I lost access to my administrator (so I can't install apps or change settings in System Preferences).
I already tried to solve my problem by following I don't have administrator account on my mac but I can't make it past the
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
command, or maybe I'm doing something wrong there?
However, here's the single-user mode screenshot:
Solution 1:
You need to enter the commands precisely, noting all spaces. If no message is shown, the command was successful, much like /sbin/mount -uw /
. Enter precisely the following, followed by ⏎ Enter/Return:
/sbin/mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
- With the first command, there's no need to keep re-running it, and no need to run it differently, it worked first try when you didn't receive an error.
- With the second command, all three tries missed the space between
rm
and/var
. Make sure the space is typed.
You should not receive a message for either command and will be returned to the prompt (#) after each is executed. Finally, run reboot
.
Solution 2:
For some reason I could just not find the .AppleSetupDone
file anywhere it was supposed to be, and I was also a little confused about whether it would be on the Macintosh HD - Data
volume or the Macintosh HD
volume, so I eventually just decided to do a find
command on all of the mounted volumes which worked great because it turned up under Macintosh HD - Data/private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone
for some reason, not really sure why.
Anyway after I found it there the rm
command worked fine.
So I guess if you've tried everything and you're still really not finding the .AppleSetupDone
file you can check in the directory I mentioned or just run the find command from the root folder /
I did find . -iname "*setupdone*"