Missing account in Login page

bigLiukTheory · Jun 22, 2013

Hi guys, hope you can help me!

Today I turned on my MacBook Pro 13" and got to my logon page. My main account was (IS) missing. I can see my other account as well as Other. The missing account, is the administrator one. So I tried some tricks, but I don't like the result. I logged with the root account, and added a new User, with the same folder and the same UID. So now I see the new User log in form, and I can enter it, getting all the files and all the things that I had in the other account. But it costed me in speed! Now my MacBook is slow as hell. It takes 80 seconds to boot up plus another 30 seconds to get ready for use. Yesterday I could do it in less then half time. Another thing I don't like is, if I go to Settings/Users And Groups (don't know how it's called in the english version) it says to me that I'm logged with my old account (the one that doesn't show up in the log on page) but if I want to do some administrator stuff it wants my new account password! Not that it prevents me to use my computer but, well, I just don't like it... and I don't know if it is related to the slow fact.

Sorry for my bad english, I'm an italian folk with barely a B2 english level.

Intell · Jun 22, 2013

Why don't you just make your current, not the newly made one, account an admin? Mac OS X gains absolutely nothing by having a separate administrator account.

bigLiukTheory · Jun 22, 2013

Intell said:
Why don't you just make your current, not the newly made one, account an admin? Mac OS X gains absolutely nothing by having a separate administrator account.

I get your point.
But maybe I said something wrong because of my bad english.

I've got three accounts now:

lucauccellatori UID 501 (folder lucauccellatori) - the missing one, who is administrator and I use for all my stuff.

luca UID 502 (folder bigliuktheory) - a standard account I made for some youtube stuff, I need it for my videos (it was the quickest way to have a clean Desktop and no references to my name in terminal and a brand new tree of folder with no trace of my name)

luke UID 501 (folder lucauccellatori) - the new one a created to access to my files, it was created as standard but now i think is administrator too.

Intell · Jun 22, 2013

Do you still see all of your stuff in /Users/?

bigLiukTheory · Jun 22, 2013

Intell said:
Do you still see all of your stuff in /Users/?

in /Users/ it shows
- bigliuktheory
- lucauccellatori (which marks as my home folder, and in it I have everything)
- luke (in there i've got nothing and it prevents me from accessing it)

so I think the answer is yes

Intell · Jun 22, 2013

You may have caused some problems by trying to fix it by creating a new user account. I suggest fixing the disk permissions. Not sure where to go after that as the new user account greatly complicates things.

bigLiukTheory · Jun 22, 2013

Intell said:
You may have caused some problems by trying to fix it by creating a new user account. I suggest fixing the disk permissions. Not sure where to go after that as the new user account greatly complicates things.

How do I do that?

Intell · Jun 22, 2013

Open Disk Utility, select your drive, go to the First Aid tab, click "Repair permissions". It probably won't do much though.

bigLiukTheory · Jun 22, 2013

Intell said:
Open Disk Utility, select your drive, go to the First Aid tab, click "Repair permissions". It probably won't do much though.

I've got a Time Machine backup which I made before this new account (luke) but after lucauccellatori went missing. How could I fix lucauccellatori without complicating things this much?

benwiggy · Jun 22, 2013

bigLiukTheory said:
So I tried some tricks, but I don't like the result. I logged with the root account, and added a new User, with the same folder and the same UID.

I think this may be the real problem. You may now have two users with the same UID. This would explain the confusion.

Repair Permission does nothing for user accounts.

If you have a backup with all your data, then it might be worth delete the user accounts, recreating them, and then restoring all the data.

bigLiukTheory · Jun 22, 2013

benwiggy said:
I think this may be the real problem. You may now have two users with the same UID. This would explain the confusion.

Repair Permission does nothing for user accounts.

If you have a backup with all your data, then it might be worth delete the user accounts, recreating them, and then restoring all the data.

Ok, now, I really need some help because I have to finish two projects for the University and finish line is really close. With this configuration (2 user accounts with same ID) my MacBook Pro is working pretty well now, with the only problem of the slow startup. So I really, REALLY, don't want to screw all up.

I have a backup made with Time Machine that I've done before the User trick. So, I have some questions. If I delete the two identical users, will I lose the data? And if so, recreating the lucauccellatori user and copying in the home directory all the data will make me recover all my data, including projects, configurations, ecc.? Wouldn't be the same thing if I just wipe all the HDD and the restore the data from Time Machine? I remember that Time Machine has a function that allow me to restore only the data and not the computer configurations. That would be really helpful.

Thanks for the answers.

benwiggy · Jun 23, 2013

If you have TM active, check that each user account is being backed up. Having a copy of your data is a necessity in any case.

Before we do anything drastic, we need to check that there is a problem with the user accounts:

Code:

dscacheutil -q user | grep -A 3 -B 2 -e uid:\ 5'[0-9][0-9]'

This command will list the users and their GIDs, so we can see if there is a problem.

bigLiukTheory · Jun 23, 2013

Code:

MacBook-Pro-di-Luca:~ lucauccellatori$ dscacheutil -q user | grep -A 3 -B 2 -e uid:\ 5'[0-9][0-9]'

name: bigLiukTheory
password: ********
uid: 502
gid: 20
dir: /Users/bigLiukTheory
shell: /bin/bash
--
--
name: lucauccellatori
password: ********
uid: 501
gid: 20
dir: /Users/lucauccellatori
shell: /bin/bash
--
--
name: luke
password: ********
uid: 501
gid: 20
dir: /Users/lucauccellatori
shell: /bin/bash

Note that I'm currently logged in with luke.

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