Setting ownership of an external boot drive

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Setting ownership of an external boot drive

Here's the problem. I'm using an M1 MBP. I have an external boot drive with Monterey installed on it. I can set it as the startup volume and boot into it without much problem. I'd like to update it to Sonoma to run some software tests. I can't. So I tried to download the full installer for Sonoma. When I try to download it I get this

So who's the owner? I installed the OS on on the drive. How can I set the owner? I'm guessing it's somewhere in the system Startup Options but I can't find any information on how to do this.

Any guidance would be very much appreciated.

P.S. So I guess this can't be done by a normal user. I went into Startup Options and tried to change the security settings. I got this.

OK was followed by this.

What is that? Actually the computer does have Touch ID, but I guess it doesn't work in the Startup Options? Or you need an external finger or iris scanner or whatever. Not only is this ridiculous, but messages like this without any guidance are disgustingly insulting.

Please, please can someone tell me what's going on in this mess of a system.

Thank you again.

Posted on Nov 29, 2023 12:57 PM

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Answer 1

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HWTech

Level 9

66,758 points

Nov 29, 2023 05:20 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Ownership is a new concept with the Apple Silicon Macs. When installing macOS to an external drive, you must authorize one of the existing admin user accounts to be associated with the external drive.

How did you create this external boot drive? Was the external installed using this same Mac, or a different Mac? Or did you clone the boot drive...again, same Mac or another Mac? Did you accept the Mac to allow ownership when you first installed macOS to the external drive?

Here are some articles which contain information about ownership. I hope you are ready for some heavy reading...it is very complex. The Eclectic Light articles are probably the best place to start since they are trying to explain things from a user perspective while the Apple article are even more technical.

https://eclecticlight.co/2023/03/15/ownership-of-apple-silicon-macs-matters-how-it-can-stop-external-bootable-disks/

https://eclecticlight.co/2021/07/18/last-week-on-my-mac-the-perils-of-m1-ownership/

https://eclecticlight.co/2021/07/21/owners-and-users-primary-and-secondary-systems-on-m1-macs/

https://eclecticlight.co/2023/03/15/ownership-of-apple-silicon-macs-matters-how-it-can-stop-external-bootable-disks/

https://eclecticlight.co/2022/11/26/booting-two-apple-silicon-macs-from-one-external-disk/

This article doesn't deal with Ownership, but does explain an external boot drive is less useful than it was on older Intel Macs.

https://eclecticlight.co/2023/11/09/should-you-make-an-emergency-disk-for-an-apple-silicon-mac/

Here are the Apple articles regarding Ownership:

Use secure token, bootstrap token, and volume ownership in deployments - Apple Support

Contents of a LocalPolicy file for a Mac with Apple silicon - Apple Support

Startup Disk security policy control for a Mac with Apple silicon - Apple Support (NL)

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Answer 2

Tom Wolsky Author

Level 10

152,763 points

Nov 29, 2023 05:27 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you very much. That’s a lot to look through and absorb. It’s very kind of kind to put this together.

The system was created in the same computer using an external boot installer, which was also created on the same computer.

Unfortunately I need to run multiple systems for different software, and it’s just not practical to build them all into a single internal drive, especially not at the prices Apple charges for storage. 1 TB is my limit.

Thank you again.

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Answer 3

Tom Wolsky Author

Level 10

152,763 points

Nov 29, 2023 01:11 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Also, I'm not sure what the first message: "No administrator was found" means. There is a user on the system and the user is admin.

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Setting ownership of an external boot drive

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