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I unintentionally renamed the /etc directory on a Mac running macOS Monterey, with disastrous consequences: the password for sudo in Terminal is no longer recognised (because the /etc/sudoers file can no longer be found), which means I can no longer run any commands that require a password. Worse, I can no longer even log into the Mac.

To resolve the problem I began with the accepted answer described by David Rouse in response to a similar question - Renamed /etc folder. I can't login anymore - asked in 2019.

The first part of that solution (booting the Mac using Single User Mode with the existing password and running mount -uw) works perfectly.

However, even from Single User Mode I am unable to rename the /etc directory. For instance, attempting to run cd or mv in relation to /etc results in a No such file or directory message, and the symlink /private folder appears to be empty - see image below.

So how can I change the folder name back to /etc so that the Mac becomes operational again?

enter image description here

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    The issue is I think that the boot disk is now two parts merged together and you see only the read only part - See bombich.com/kb/ccc6/working-apfs-volume-groups for some idea
    – mmmmmm
    Nov 18, 2021 at 14:28
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    Probably the best way to progress is to reinstall macOS
    – mmmmmm
    Nov 18, 2021 at 14:49
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    Boot into recovery, reinstall the OS only. Your files should not be impacted.
    – nohillside ♦
    Nov 18, 2021 at 16:08
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    @TechnoCat Why do you use the Single User Mode? If you use the Recovery mode and unlock if necessary the " - Data" volume (case Filevault active) you can access and modify all the system structures.
    – user415185
    Nov 18, 2021 at 16:16
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    TechnoCat: Did you at least try to mount the Data volume? Booting to single user mode only mounts the sealed, readonly volume. The volume containing the /private folder has to be explicitly mounted.
    – David Anderson
    Nov 18, 2021 at 16:49

1 Answer 1

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I have Monterey installed in a VMware Fusion Player virtual machine.

I followed your instructions and was able to rename /private/etc to /private/xetc.

When I boot Monterey in single user mode, I see the following output. The image shows instructions in the form of three three commands, which can be used to mount the data partition on an SEP-enabled device.

Note: For a beter view of the image, click on the image or open the image in a new window.

Below is the output from the mount command. Only the sealed, read-only volume is mounted on /. This is why the /private folder is empty.

So, I followed the instructions shown in the first image and entered the following commands.

Note: These commands produced messages, which I chose to ignore.

/sbin/mount -P 1
/usr/libexec/init_data_protection
/sbin/mount -P 2

Below is the output from the mount command. Now, the Data volume is mount on /System/Volumes/Data.

Since this Data volume was tagged with the data role metadata flag when created and is in the same APFS Volume Group as the initially mounted volume, both volumes share the root (/) mount point. In other words, this Data volume is mounted twice.

Next, I made the repair by entering the following command.

mv /private/xetc /private/etc

Note: I could have also made the same repair by entering the longer version given below.

mv /System/Volumes/Data/private/xetc /System/Volumes/Data/private/etc

Finally, I entered the command below to boot to Monterey.

exit

 

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  • Interestingly enough, the man page of mount doesn't know about -P.
    – nohillside ♦
    Nov 18, 2021 at 16:56
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    @nohillside: I have to confess, I do not know what the commands actually do. Entering the commands was a pure guess on my part. I did update my answer to show the output from the mount command before and after entering the three commands.
    – David Anderson
    Nov 18, 2021 at 18:12
  • Thanks @DavidAnderson. Your solution works perfectly!
    – TechnoCat
    Nov 19, 2021 at 5:23

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