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Can't login after drive name change
- Thread starter idntknw
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How did you rename the drives, did you rename them while booted into the mini or from outside.
Do you have another Mac, if so boot the Mini into Target Disc Mode and rename them back to what they were.
But, it is odd that you can not login, should be possible even when you change the drives names.
Do you have another Mac, if so boot the Mini into Target Disc Mode and rename them back to what they were.
But, it is odd that you can not login, should be possible even when you change the drives names.
Very strange, I've changed names of volumes before without problems.
You are probably on Lion or Mountain Lion, you could start up in recovery mode and I am pretty sure you should be able to change the password again although right now I can't remember how.
I will try to find it.
I think something else must have changed, are you sure didn't touch any other settings (permissions) in the get info panel?
Found it.
Reset Password
And
OS X Lion: Reset a login password
Hope this Helps
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Odd odd, You might get back into recovery mode and launch Disk Utility and repair permissions there.
Something else must have changed, maybe a corrupt KeyChain or permissions set wrong, try the above first.
Edit: You don't happen to have fusion drive do you?
I tried the repair permissions, still nothing...
No, not a fusion drive...I have a Samsung 830 ssd as the main boot drive and the original as backup...I did move my home folder to the back up drive...
This is very odd...but again this is my first mac and didn't know changing the names of the drives would cause this havoc
No, not a fusion drive...I have a Samsung 830 ssd as the main boot drive and the original as backup...I did move my home folder to the back up drive...
This is very odd...but again this is my first mac and didn't know changing the names of the drives would cause this havoc
Simply changing a drive name wouldn't cause this problem.
You say, however, that you've also moved your home folder - if you've just moved the whole thing over to the new drive without hardlinking it, that would cause your issue. Generally the best thing to do is to leave the user directory where it is and just move documents, itunes etc over to the new location, making aliases where needed.
You say, however, that you've also moved your home folder - if you've just moved the whole thing over to the new drive without hardlinking it, that would cause your issue. Generally the best thing to do is to leave the user directory where it is and just move documents, itunes etc over to the new location, making aliases where needed.
When did you move the folder?
There is a keychain in that folder, you changed the names of the discs and now the OS can not find your home folder with your keychain.
I am sure you can change that without reinstalling, let me think about it, I'll be back soon.(15 Minutes)
Edit: How did you move the folder, did you make a symlink in the old position on your Mini's OS.
You could make a new symlink with another mac but I think it is also possible in Single User Mode.
Yes, I did move it and everything has been working fine for quite awhile now...
And like I said all I did was use the "get info" for the drives and changed the names of the drives that way...
If I could possibly get in someway and change the names of the drives back to original before I changed them?
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Ok, thank you
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I'm not sure the exact method I moved the folder...I did a google search and stumbled onto a site with the info...but can't seem to find the site...
I'm on my mobile now and don't have it bookmarked here
And like I said all I did was use the "get info" for the drives and changed the names of the drives that way...
If I could possibly get in someway and change the names of the drives back to original before I changed them?
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Ok, thank you
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I'm not sure the exact method I moved the folder...I did a google search and stumbled onto a site with the info...but can't seem to find the site...
I'm on my mobile now and don't have it bookmarked here
Is guest login enabled, could you possibly log into that account, if so you could try from there to enable root access, this could be done in Leopard in Directory Utility but I don't know if this is still there in Mountain Lion and if that could be used in a Guest account.
FYI, I am in Leopard so I am not too familiar with changes in OS.
Other Post above updated.
FYI, I am in Leopard so I am not too familiar with changes in OS.
Other Post above updated.
Not sure about the guest directory...I don't think so?
I do so appreciate everyone's input trying to help me with this uncalled for flub up
Not sure what you mean about the symlink?
Ok, I'm in single user mode but don't have a clue what all this means?
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A symlink is more or less an alias to the original folder/file.
My quwetion remains, you moved your home folder to the other disk, how did you do that, you moved it and made an alias(folder) in the /Volumes/User or did you create an symlink in that position.
The reason I want to know is, you managed to move over the home folder but you need to know how, I could do that in less than one minute, how did you do it.
The command for creating a symlink should be ln -s
So, you need something like this: ln -s path to where your home is now(space)path where new symlink is needed
Lets assume your name is Peter-assume volume1 to be the OS disk-volume2 to be the place where your home folder is now. Then you get this command.
Also lets assume your home folder is /Volume2/Peter
ln -s /Volume2/Peter /Volume1/Users/
But, You might need to mount the disks in Single user mode, I am not aware of this, you could try the above without if it works and reboot.
You really need type inthe paths of both exactly, otherwise it will not work.
Edit: I will give it a try myself, I'll be back within 10 minutes, have to restart.
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My internet gives me a bit of troubles last 2 days so replying can be a bit later.
Now I am having this idea, why not install OS X on the second disk and boot from there and then make a symlink to your home folder on the other disk.
I am pretty sure you could do this from Single User mode but I think you need a few commands to mount the disks before making a symlink and instead of Volume names you probably need disk identifier names, something like disk0s1.
Probably easier to install a second OS, always comes in handy, just install the bare minimum, so no printer drivers nor languages.
Now, I had problems myself, I started up in Single User Mode and I am positive you can repair from there but I forgot to unmount the disks before a restart/reboot, then started up but internet could not connect with dongle, restarted and halfway through it restarted again and again, I then booted from different disk because in other partition the system could not repair the disk, even from external Disk Utility could not repair, ran Diskwarrior and all is well now.
I looked at the page where they show you how to do it, that's actually fairly simple.
The problem you got is simple, you renamed the disk and the OS lost it's home folder (symlink) containing the keychain file which is needed when you log in.
If Root user was enabled before you got this problem you still could log into the root account since the keychain file is somewhere else.
I recommend what I last told you, to install a bare system on the other disk, boot from there and create a new symlink by using the command I gave you.
It is possible in SUM but involves a lot of commands and I still did not figure out completely how to do this.
Note, it is always better to at least have a second bootable OS, if you have issues it is easier to solve, best way is an external bootable disk, I think that even a 8GB USB stick could be used just to be able to boot from it and solve the problems.
Many people don't have a backup disk, I guess you don't have one either, if your mini hard disk crashes you will lose everything.
Ok, bare with me please...I could download the OS and put it on a USB stick, boot from the stick...go into disk utility, or terminal? and change the symlink to the home folder on the second drive?
I assume this all can be done from my PC?...I do not have another mac...just a windows 7 pc...
Again, thank you for your help
No, boot into recovery mode and install a bare system on the disk where your home folder is, DON'T erase and install or partition, just install.
You also could do the same, but install it on a USB stick, you don't need to download anything.(The last one is safer)
Then if installed, boot from it and make a symlink on your normal OS disk which points towards the home folder.
Edit: I installed the OS to the USB and booted from it and changed the name of the back up drive back to the original name that was used when I formatted it after the SSD install and everything seems to be up and going...
I am going to purchase a SSD for the external USB enclosure I have for backups...Since I have the drives setup the way I have them, how would I do back ups to the external drive?...I'm using Carbon Copy Cloner...
Thanks again
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Wow, so you got it to work again, happy you solved it.
So, you want to backup both the internal disks to an external, I think the easiest way is to just use CCC to make a copy of your OS disk and then use CCC again but point it to the other disk and make a backup again, in CCC there is a setting to protect the root level(folders) of the disk so it will not delete the rest of the folders(read OS).
This is how I do it but it is a bit confusing, the earlier versions of CCC where less confusing than the current one.
You say you will buy an external SSD for backup, why an SSD if you don't really need to start up from it, yes, backup is faster but SSD's are still not that cheap.
Depends also on how big your data is(100 GB-200GB-.... how big.
Yes, and again I appreciate your help...after you wrote it and I had in front of me it was very obvious what went wrong...even though this is my first mac...again, I appreciate it.
The only thing that is odd is after I got it going I noticed that there are a lot more page outs and not as much free memory now.
I have tried purge in terminal, reset the PRAM...nothing seems to help.
There were never any page outs neither before nor after I upgraded the ram, and before the drive name change incident...I upgraded the ram to 8GB weeks ago.
Even after boot up and just opening lets say, Chrome, and browsing for a bit, there are page outs...is this normal?
And it really doesn't make much sense to go with a SSD for back ups, huh?.
I'll shop around for an HDD, if anyone knows of any decent decent deals online that would be great...doesn't have to be a crazy amount of space.
Again, thank you for your help.
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are you in the usa? amazon has some deals as does staples
55 bucks
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvi...e=UTF8&qid=1354212965&sr=1-7&keywords=usb+hdd
64 bucks
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvi...e=UTF8&qid=1354212900&sr=1-2&keywords=usb+hdd
I am in the US and thank you for the links.
I picked up a Seagate 500GB from Staples.
Again, thanks for the heads up.