OT! - All accounts on OS X server have lost admin privledges.

[Snickasaurus]

Realizations:

1) This is OT but I am asking anyone and everyone.

2) My server OS is way out of date. [10.5.8] (I took over this environment not long ago and am in process of getting new hard/software)

Last night I was at home working on my server. Moving files, backing up logs...normal stuff. I was prompted to run updates on my MacBook Pro so I disconnected from the SSH sessions I was using, ran my updates and rebooted. After getting back on VPN I was able to SSH back into all machines except for this one and this is my JSS. I'm completely stuck and my fingers are sore of googling. Please if anyone has seen this before and can shed some light I would be eternally grateful. Never have I seen an OS that removed all users admin privileges.

EDIT - 0
Forgot to say that when you check "Allow user to admin...." it DOES give you the warning to reboot before changes can take place but as you could imaging once you reboot it's back unchecked.

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[Andrina · Accepted solution]

It's server, so root should be enabled... root should allow you to make the necessary changes you need to make here.

[Snickasaurus]

Didn't mean to mark that as answered!

Thanks Andrina for the response but I'm logged in as root and as I said in my first post no matter how many times I try to make other users Admins it won't work. Even the "root" account has limited functionality in Terminal.

Any way I can make this "unanswered" again?

[bajones]

I've seen this issue before with Leopard. If you're not ready to upgrade to 10.6 yet, you will want to insert your 10.5 install DVD and perform an archive and install. Then run all software updates. This has solved this problem for me in the past.

[pbenham]

I've seen the admin group become corrupt before. These are my notes that I use to recover:

Recover from missing admin group

1 - enable root from install cd
2 - log in as root
3 - Type this command in terminal "cp /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default/groups/admin.plist /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/groups/"
4 - Restart computer,
5 - Log in as root, open accounts and apply admin prefs normally.

What is happening is that the admin group is either becoming corrupt or disappearing all together. This restores the original admin group account settings. The command means - "cp" copy
Location of fresh admin.plist - /System/Library/DirectoryServices/DefaultLocalDB/Default/groups/admin.plist
Location to copy the fresh plist to - /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/groups/