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Softwareupdate is trying to authenticate user - Authentication is disabled

  • August 26, 2021
  • 29 replies
  • 15283 views
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29 replies

red_beard
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  • red_beard
  • Valued Contributor
  • November 26, 2024

Writing to say, just experienced this issue running Sequoia 15.2 Beta 3 on an M1 Max MacBook Pro and MacBook Pro M2 running Sonoma 14.2  A small portion of our fleet is still bound. Thankfully most of them are not.

@bwoods script worked great and I utilized Self Service to make it available when our techs need to help other end users. 

R
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  • RJ52
  • Contributor
  • April 2, 2025

Added some osascript to prompt for creds.

#!/bin/bash username=$(osascript -e 'Tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Enter user username:" default answer ""' -e 'text returned of result' 2>/dev/null) password=$(osascript -e 'Tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Enter user password:" with hidden answer default answer ""' -e 'text returned of result' 2>/dev/null) adminUser=$(osascript -e 'Tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Enter admin username:" default answer ""' -e 'text returned of result' 2>/dev/null) adminPassword=$(osascript -e 'Tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Enter admin password:" with hidden answer default answer ""' -e 'text returned of result' 2>/dev/null) #Check if your account has securetoken enabled, (it probably does) # Disable it then reenable it. sysadminctl -secureTokenStatus "$username" sysadminctl -secureTokenOff "$username" -password "$password" -adminUser "$adminUser" -adminPassword "$adminPassword" sysadminctl -secureTokenOn "$username" -password "$password" -adminUser "$adminUser" -adminPassword "$adminPassword" diskutil apfs UpdatePreboot / sysadminctl -secureTokenStatus "$username" exit 0 ## Success exit 1 ## Failure

This worked for me in the past, but today the script worked, but the problem persisted. Has anyone run into that issue? 

P
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  • PieceofEight
  • New Contributor
  • April 16, 2025

This worked for me in the past, but today the script worked, but the problem persisted. Has anyone run into that issue? 


RJ52 and others who this may help: I found that using the interactive switch in the script below is what works on macOS Sequoia in our environment to fix Secure Token for a user. After running script below and signing back in as user, they are able to run macOS updates with no Touch ID errors.

Log in as admin and launch Terminal.

sudo sysadminctl -secureTokenOff <username> -password password interactive

Password prompt in Terminal: input admin password

Pop up authentication window: input admin password

sudo sysadminctl -secureTokenOn <username> -password password interactive

Pop up authentication window: input admin password

diskutil apfs UpdatePreboot /

 

markgalvan
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  • markgalvan
  • New Contributor
  • October 29, 2025

I was able to fix the error. It has to do with a corrupt secure token.

I told the user to login with the existing local admin account an then to execute the following script:

#Check if your account has securetoken enabled, (it probably does) # Disable it then reenable it. sysadminctl -secureTokenStatus <username> sysadminctl -secureTokenOff <username> -password - -adminUser <adminusername> -adminPassword - sysadminctl -secureTokenOn <username> -password - -adminUser <adminusername> -adminPassword - diskutil apfs UpdatePreboot /

 After that I told him to do a reboot.

Everything seems fine now. Logging in offline to his Mobile account also works again.

Added some osascript to prompt for creds.

#!/bin/bash username=$(osascript -e 'Tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Enter user username:" default answer ""' -e 'text returned of result' 2>/dev/null) password=$(osascript -e 'Tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Enter user password:" with hidden answer default answer ""' -e 'text returned of result' 2>/dev/null) adminUser=$(osascript -e 'Tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Enter admin username:" default answer ""' -e 'text returned of result' 2>/dev/null) adminPassword=$(osascript -e 'Tell application "System Events" to display dialog "Enter admin password:" with hidden answer default answer ""' -e 'text returned of result' 2>/dev/null) #Check if your account has securetoken enabled, (it probably does) # Disable it then reenable it. sysadminctl -secureTokenStatus "$username" sysadminctl -secureTokenOff "$username" -password "$password" -adminUser "$adminUser" -adminPassword "$adminPassword" sysadminctl -secureTokenOn "$username" -password "$password" -adminUser "$adminUser" -adminPassword "$adminPassword" diskutil apfs UpdatePreboot / sysadminctl -secureTokenStatus "$username" exit 0 ## Success exit 1 ## Failure

This worked for me. 
Thanks a ton. 

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