Bputil says "Unknown user - try again" after macOS 14.5 re-install

Our Neighbors Asahi Linux Ask Asahi
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I have 2021 M1Pro and after re-installing macOS, I cannot boot into Asahi Fedora. I get a strange loop of blank screens / Apple logo with progress bar, then eventually the machine falls back to macOS.

When I run the Asahi installer from macOS, it shows my Asahi partitions, as well as the macOS 13.5 “stub” related to them. I try to repair that stub - option p - and I get into recoveryOS where bputil is running a Terminal window and I’m asked for credentials.

When I try to login with my username from my new macOS install, I get “Unknown user - try again”. So bputil can’t proceed, and I can’t repair my Asahi boot process.

That username is different than my username on the macOS installation I erased. The old username will be accepted for the username prompt, but its password is rejected.

I really don’t want to delete this Asahi installation and lose the data if I can help it. How can I proceed even if it’s a long road?

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Asahi Linux “piggy backs” on the user authentication from the macOS you install it from. When you reinstall macOS, you are invalidating this authentication, which means you can no longer authorize changes to the Asahi Linux install. This is the main reason why we do not support deleting macOS after installing Asahi Linux.

You’re not the first one to run into this with a macOS reinstall, so I just added some code to re-copy credentials when you do a repair. Please try the dev installer and report back if it works: curl -L https://alx.sh/dev | sh.

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Works perfectly for me. bputil accepts my current username and password from macOS, and I can boot into both OSes again. Thank you!

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Thanks for confirming. I’ll promote it to the stable installer a bit later :slight_smile:

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