Extracting [username].plist File

[Miguel3451]

Greetings. I have an iMac running Catalina OS X 10.15.5 and I want to extract a copy of my [username].plist file to play with. I have been following two guides -

1. https://wiki.elvis.science/index.ph...er_Passwords#Get_access_to_a_Privileged_Shell

2. https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/hacking-macos-hack-mac-password-without-changing-0189001/

The first tells me to restart the machine in Recovery mode, disable SIP and go to /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/ to find the file. All works as expected except that the file is not listed. No such file or folder. So I decide to try Single-User mode. This works well and now i can indeed see the file but nothing I do will allow me to make a copy and save it on either the internal HDD or to an external drive. I don't want to mess with the original file I just want a copy to play with but Apple doesn't seem to want to let me do even that.

Could any of you Terminal gurus give me a clue as how I can do this? Your help would be very much appreciated.

 

[bogdanw]

You didn't mention in the previous thread what happens when you run in Terminal
sudo cp /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/[username].plist ~/Desktop/[username].plist
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/location-of-username-plist-file.2240376/

 

[Miguel3451]

You didn't mention in the previous thread what happens when you run in Terminal
sudo cp /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/[username].plist ~/Desktop/[username].plist
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/location-of-username-plist-file.2240376/

Thanks very much for your response bogdanw. In single-user mode I get -

cp ~Desktop/[username].plist: No such file or directory

Obviously having a problem with the output file.
[automerge]1592128895[/automerge]
... and just running the command from a terminal under OSX, I get -

zsh: no such user or named directory: Desktop

 

[bogdanw]

The command works from normal mode even with SIP enabled. Assuming your user name is miguel, it should look like this

sudo cp /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/miguel.plist ~/Desktop/miguel.plist

 

[Miguel3451]

Thanks again. I just booted into single-user mode and went to the /users/ directory and confirmed that the miguel.plist file is, in fact, there. I then went back into OSX and tried the command again copying it from your example. It worked. Looking back I can see now that I typed ~Desktop instead of ~/Desktop in my previous attempts. Duh.

I really appreciate your persistence.