Lost ALL Permissions to Main Home Folder / All Settings Reset?

[gank41]

I just rebooted my M1 MBP and when I signed back in, it's saying I have no access to my own home folder, my dock and everything was totally reset to look like a new user account setup, and all of my apps are opening with permissions errors. I don't have access to my own folders, any folders in fact.. I usually have Dark Mode on all the time but it's in Light Mode. No sign of any of my iCloud settings in the Settings app at all. It looks almost exactly like a brand new user account, accept the apps I have set to start at login are still starting but then not working because they can't connect to their respective folders. I'm being prompted for my password to run a large number of Apple services that would normally just run. I've tried logging into a USB Installer drive to run repairHomePermissions in the Terminal and then to run Disk Utility / Repair Permissions, restarted and there was no change. I reinstalled macOS from recovery and am seeing no change. I'm afraid I might have to erase & restore from Time Machine. This really sucks. Not what I wanted to deal with this weekend at all.

I'm probably just throwing a message in a bottle but searching online for keywords based on what's happening on my end isn't returning any relevant search results. And considering I've already repaired permissions, ran disk repair, AND reinstalled macOS over itself? I'm at a loss. Hoping maybe someone else has had this issue and maybe I can get some good luck come my way via some odd Terminal command or something.


Thanks in advance everybody,
Jeff

 

[barbu]

I would call or visit Apple, is that an option for you? More technical solutions would likely involve booting into Single User Mode and manually repairing permissions. I am very curious how this happened in the first place. What were you doing before the fateful reboot?

 

[gank41]

I would call or visit Apple, is that an option for you? More technical solutions would likely involve booting into Single User Mode and manually repairing permissions. I am very curious how this happened in the first place. What were you doing before the fateful reboot?

I woke up this morning and opened the lid of my MBP and everything was frozen and had to hard reboot. Didn't have anything open that I haven't used and left open any other time over the the years- apps like Photos and Safari and Messages, I think. Maybe Mail. Used those last night, closed laptop lid and went to bed. Woke to it all frozen. I should have checked the time because it probably would have shown the time it froze up. No way to really know now.

 

[gank41]

Well now I'm stumped. I booted into recovery and connected two of my Time Machine drives, after reinstalling macOS, and when I go to Time Machine to try restoring from a backup, I get a message that I must use Migration Assistant to transfer data from this backup, regardless of what date I choose. Fortunately I have another Mac I can connect this one to and try using Apple Configurator. That's a bummer. I'm not doing this now. Stuff like this always happens when you don't want it to lol

 

[gank41]

Tried the Revive Option and that didn't work. Once I am actually booted into the desktop and open the Settings app, the Users & Groups section doesn't load. It's behaving as though it's a guest account but trying to open my normal stuff at login all while having no access to any of the folders at all. So bizarre for this to quite literally just happen after finding it frozen in the morning and having to hard reboot.

Going to try an Erase & Restore in DFU mode while connecting it to my Mac mini.

 

[gank41]

So, this happened to me again today. Restarted and when I signed in, it’s acting as though it’s a new user logging in with no access to anything at all. I went to do a Time Machine restore from a back up this morning and now it’s saying I need to reinstall macOS and use Recovery Assistant. Wonderful.

 

[gank41]

Don’t have time now, and of course now I’d NEED my laptop. Sucks. But I’ll try putting it in DFU mode and try a revive. I think last time this happened I went straight for the restore option. Maybe the revive will work. Later.

 

[kagharaht]

Going to try an Erase & Restore in DFU mode while connecting it to my Mac mini.

So after you did the Erase & Restore. So you reformatted the Hard Drive and Reinstall Mac OS and then your TM data?

 

[gank41]

So after you did the Erase & Restore. So you reformatted the Hard Drive and Reinstall Mac OS and then your TM data?

I did that last time this happened, but had to do thru DFU mode because it’s not letting me log out of iCloud. Something is hosed with the account, although I’m having no iCloud issues on my other devices and can still sign into iCloud. It’s going to be another long weekend.

 

[gank41]

Trying to Restore my M1MBP from Apple Configurator on my other Mac, and it's giving me this Error-

 

[gank41]

Tried the Thunderbolt/USB-C Cable that came with it, along with an Actual 3rd Party USB-C Cable and am getting the same error regardless. If I can just erase the machine I’d be able to set it up again, but I can’t even get that far. Keep getting this Error during the install process. I can boot to a Recovery USB I created and still see my macOS volume is there. I just can’t get at it.

 

[Fishrrman]

I've got some advice for you.
You won't like it.

At night, SHUT DOWN the MBP.
Reboot the next morning.

Nothing beats "a fresh start" each day.

Having said that, might be time to:
a. back up the internal drive
b. use the "erase all content and settings" option to "wipe clean" the MBP
c. now go through the "setup procedure" again, and re-migrate everything from the backup.

My opinion only.
Others will disagree.
Some will disagree vehemently.

 

[steve123]

Any chance you were looking at the advanced settings for your user account and mistakenly changed the UID? You would not see the effect of that change until a reboot. If you have auto update turned on your computer may have updated overnight and rebooted.

 

[gank41]

No, yesterday I rebooted and was able to log back in, but instead of my normal desktop background, I was seeing the default Sonoma background. All of my normal apps looked to be starting up, which shows the account still exists and was trying to do what it normally does when I log in... But it didn't recognize me as being me and thus had no access to any folders, including the application data folders for each app that opens at launch, giving me all the errors in the screenshot above. I'm not even able to log into iCloud. That just times out. But I'm having no iCloud login issues on any of my other devices.

I totally swear, I changed nothing. I just restarted. But it's the second time this has happened to me in two months!

Now I'm currently unable to even get to the Volume Picker, or iBoot or whatever it's called, where you hold down the power button until you see loading options, and then you can boot to an external drive or get to recovery.. Can't even get there. As soon as it says "Loading Options", the screen quickly goes to the restore screen

(pardon the reflective hand)



I've got an appointment at the local Apple Genius Bar in just over an hour. Hopefully they can fix this without having to send it in. But from what I can gather, the firmware needs to be restored, and that should be happening when reinstalling macOS but it is not.

 

[steve123]

All of my normal apps looked to be starting up, which shows the account still exists and was trying to do what it normally does when I log in... But it didn't recognize me as being me and thus had no access to any folders

This is exactly what would happen if the UID was changed. The UID is a user identifier.

User identifier - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

When a new user is created with macOS, a UID is assigned to the user. If you only ever had one user account on your computer, it is highly likely the UID for your account should be "501". Disk permissions are tied to the UID not your user name. So, if the UID was changed for some reason (to say "502"), the account still exists but the changed UID messes up all the permissions on the disk that are tied to UID 501.

 

[gank41]

Well, that does definitely make sense. Unfortunately, I had tried an "Erase & Restore". By the time I had left to bring it to the Apple Store earlier, it had been erased a few times. The folks at the Apple Store couldn't fix it, either, and had to ship it out. They said I should expect it shipped back to my house by Tuesday! Repairs that would cost $598 are going to cost me $0 due due to me still being on AppleCare+ until November....