Access Applications Directory with Terminal in Recovery Mode – Guide

applicationslibrarymampterminal

I hope someone can help.

I'm trying to access my Appplications directory in Recovery Mode of my iMac with Terminal. I want to copy a folder to an external hard drive. After updating to Big Sur, my iMac won't start and so I need some files to save. The path I want to access is /Applications/MAMP/htdocs.

When I type ls /Applications/MAMP: it says that there is no such file or directory.
When I type ls /Applications: Safari.app and Utilities appear.

When I type ls /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/users/"username"/Applications .localized appears.

Is there another command I have to use? Is it even possible to get into the application folder?

By the way: I already copied the whole Library folder… maybe it's possible to override the MAMP-files? Or do I need another backup of the htdocs-folder?

Edit: This is the result of diskutil list internal

enter image description here

Best Answer

When in macOS Recovery from macOS Big Sur, in Terminal, the location of the MAMP installed htdocs folder is, e.g.,:

/Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data/Applications/MAMP/htdocs

You can also use the find command to locate it, e.g.,:

find /Volumes -type d -name 'htdocs' 2>/dev/null

The output of that find command would be, e.g.,:

/Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data/Applications/MAMP/htdocs
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/MAMP/htdocs

The one with Macintosh HD - Data is the one you want.

When in macOS Recovery, using Terminal can be a bit difficult. I find using Disk Utility to backup select folders, saving the DMG Image to an external drive, is much easier, albeit even if copying a bit more than needed.

Disk Utility > File > New Image > Image from Folder…

enter image description here

Note that there is no external drive attached and the picture is just to show ease of access to the file system compared to using Terminal.

Related Question