If you start your Mac in recovery mode with command + r
and hold down those two keys for 15 or 20 seconds after the
chime, you end up in Recovery Mode.
While voiceover won't come on automatically even if you
normally have it on, it will come up in a limited form and at a
rather low fixed volume level wafter one strikes Command + F5.
The voice is very odd-sounding as the system is running
under limited resources.
There is a dropdown menu that gives one access to the Mac
terminal and I need to use it to try to fix a problem. The
problem is that I fell for the nagging and upgraded to Catalina
which may be really good but I lost admin privileges and Apple
Tec Support has suggested that my 2 choices are to wipe the Mac
and start over or I should attempt to remove a special empty file
which makes the Mac think that the setup hasn't been finished and
one is prompted on the next boot to setup a new account.
rm "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.AppleSetupDone"
I've got a full backup but a wipe + rebuild takes a lot of time
so I want to do the file remove as I've been in the unix command
line for 30 years now and am comfortable with it.
Of course, with this whole issue, there is one problem,
actually, one problem after another.
One used to be able to boot in single-user mode and type
a few commands to fix a problem like this but that no longer
works for Catalina and future upgrades.
So, what is recommended now is to boot in Recovery mode
and snag this dropdown menu at the top of the screen which has
terminal in it.
How do I activate something like that?
So far, I'm just trapped in the file recovery maze. If I
needed to do a file recovery, I'm sure I'd end up trapped in that
dropdown menu, judging how this whole situation has played out so
far.
It's been the ultimate Catch 22 plus a healthy dose of
If only, ...
What should I try to activate that dropdown menu? That's the
first thing to do and then I'll see why terminal won't let me
delete that file.
If I sound a little annoyed, that's an understatement.
Thanks for all constructive suggestions.
Martin McCormick
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