macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Beta 6 Fixes Root Password Vulnerability

[ChrisA]

I formatted my firewire connected external disk drive as APFS on November 6th. It has been working just fine for about a month now.

I still don't think I can format a Time Machine drive as APFS.

 

[Lukewarmsteak]

So. i got a new computer, my user name is Lukewarmsteak, and my password was left blank.
I turned on the Parental lock, and set a password, however i was unable to use it, so i googled it. I found out that i could use the root route, to get around not knowing my password, or not remembering at least... i think...
but now i can't install anything, and i need to do an update for a few programs.

what do i do now?
Can i roll the system software back to use the root pass?
then, even if i did, i'd still need to figure out how to disable the parental lock.
what do i do!!! ???

 

[ChrisA]

Boot the system from another system disk. Your existing system disk is just an "external drive" and as root you can do anything you like to it. If you have another Mac you can use "target disk mode" (Goggle it) to boot off another Mac's system disk

the above methods preserve all your data.

You can also restore the system to a previous state from backup. But this will remove any work you have done after that backup was done.

 

[Lukewarmsteak]

Solved -
i found this on another forum or thread or something...

I Booted in Single User Mode - (APPLE+S) - typed "/sbin/mount -uw /" -no quotes... hit return,
then typed "rm /var/db/.applesetupdone" -no quotes... hit return
typed "Reboot" -no Quotes, hit return.

it restarted, and i created a new "ADMIN" user, and was able to change the Parental Control Lock from that user account, and I now had a user that had admin privileges.

thanks!