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Because of a very faulty script my root's PrimaryGroupID is 101 and UniqueID is 101. I have still an access to root, I can run sudo from my admin account, but the sudo and root do not have all the necessary rights obviously.

I can read dscl output, for instance:

dscl . -read /Users/root PrimaryGroupID
PrimaryGroupID: 101

dscl . -list /Users UniqueID
root 101

dscl . -list /Groups PrimaryGroupID
wheel 0

But I cannot change anything with dscl:

sudo dscl . -change /Users/root UniqueID 101 0
<main> attribute status: eDSPermissionError
<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14120 (eDSPermissionError)

What is interesting, when I run:

dscl . -read /Groups/wheel GroupMembership
GroupMembership: root

How can I reset the UniqueID and PrimaryGroupID of the root to 0. I logged in Terminal through Mac OS X Installation DVD, I have a superuser with all the necessary rights there, but I did not figure out how to access the records of Directory Service from there.

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1 Answer 1

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First, make a backup of the user & group data; it's stored in the /Volumes/yourbootvolume/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default, so just copy that entire directory to someplace safe in case anything else goes wrong. Once that's done, there are a couple of different ways to reset root's uid back to 0:

It's probably simplest to use a text editor: edit /Volumes/yourbootvolume/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/root.plist, look for a section like this:

<key>uid</key>
<array>
    <string>101</string>
</array>

and change the "101" to "0". Warning: if you mess up the format of this file, you can render your system even more unusable than it is now.

The other option would be to use dscl -f to open the regular system's user files even though you're booted from the DVD instead. Check to make sure you can access them with:

dscl -f /Volumes/yourbootvolume/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default localonly -read  /Local/Target/Users/root

It should print out the various properties of the root account, including "UniqueID: 101". If that worked, you should be able to set it back with:

dscl -f /Volumes/yourbootvolume/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default localonly -change  /Local/Target/Users/root UniqueID 101 0
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  • Thanks. I went for manual edit of the root.plist as the second approach complained about missing linked private framework.
    – pirags
    Dec 7, 2011 at 20:53
  • A missing private framework seems rather strange (if moot at this point). What version was the install DVD you used?
    – Gordon Davisson
    Dec 8, 2011 at 5:52

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