#883 Upgrade to Yosemite deletes _privoxy user, causing privoxy to refuse to run

[cjpragman]

Hi,
after upgrading from Mavericks to Yosemite on 2 machines, I noticed that privacy refused to run on both.
Upon troubleshooting, I found that it was complaining that the _privoxy user didn't exist. This same problem happened when I upgraded the machine from 10.8 to 10.9 as well. It appears that for whatever reason, Apple's OS update process removes the _privoxy user from dscl (or otherwise renders it unusable). Seems to be a pattern with apple updates...

I looked at the preinstall script, and decided it was above my expertise to manually issue some of those commands. So instead, I ran the uninstall script, and reinstalled from the 3.0.21 package. Both the uninstall and the reinstall worked fine.

Everything seems to be working fine for me now.

Perhaps this will help you when you get other comments about privoxy not working on Yosemite.

[Skritek]

This is caused because _privoxy user account ID is generated above 500 (the same for _privoxy group). These user accounts get deleted during system upgrade. Modification to preinstall script is needed to correct this. See this ticket

My solution is attached

[Ian Silvester]

Yes it is. As part of their usual 'Apple knows best' approach, since OS X 10.8 non-interative accounts (those prefixed with an underscore) are blindly deleted as part of OS version upgrade, hence the account my installer creates so that Privoxy can drop privileges at runtime is removed. As per this ticket, the workaround is to uninstall/reinstall Privoxy to have it recreated. I prefer this over using an interactive account, since then 'privoxy' would appear as an option on the login screen.

Ian

On Fri, 10 Apr 2026, at 05:14, Fabian Keil wrote:

• status: open --> pending
• assigned_to: Ian Silvester
• Comment:
Thanks for the report.

Ian, do you know if this is still an issue.

[bugs:#883] https://sourceforge.net/p/ijbswa/bugs/883/ Upgrade to Yosemite deletes _privoxy user, causing privoxy to refuse to run

Status: pending
Group: version 3.0.21
Created: Sun Nov 02, 2014 03:47 PM UTC by cjpragman
Last Updated: Tue Oct 25, 2016 10:17 AM UTC
Owner: Ian Silvester

Hi,
after upgrading from Mavericks to Yosemite on 2 machines, I noticed that privacy refused to run on both.
Upon troubleshooting, I found that it was complaining that the _privoxy user didn't exist. This same problem happened when I upgraded the machine from 10.8 to 10.9 as well. It appears that for whatever reason, Apple's OS update process removes the _privoxy user from dscl (or otherwise renders it unusable). Seems to be a pattern with apple updates...

I looked at the preinstall script, and decided it was above my expertise to manually issue some of those commands. So instead, I ran the uninstall script, and reinstalled from the 3.0.21 package. Both the uninstall and the reinstall worked fine.

Everything seems to be working fine for me now.

Perhaps this will help you when you get other comments about privoxy not working on Yosemite.

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[Fabian Keil]

Thanks for the confirmation.

I've noticed it's even mentioned in the FAQ:
https://www.privoxy.org/faq/trouble.html#MACOSXACCOUNTDELETION

[Fabian Keil]

Thanks for the report.

Ian, do you know if this is still an issue.