Wanttogobacktopc

Q: Reset Home Folder permissions and ACLs Error

I have repeatedly run "Reset Home Folder permissions and ACLs" and let it run for up to a day and it never completes the task.

 

I ran it from startup (Command + Option + R) - Utilities - Terminal - typed "resetpassword" - chose my user account - selected "Reset Home Folder permissions and ACLs."

 

I was confused by some other threads as to whether or not there was a safe way to resolve this.

 

I'm running OS X Mouintain Lion 10.8.4.

 

Before trying this I repeatedly ran all of the repair permissions options and other utilities in disk utilities.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Aug 31, 2013 10:06 AM

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Q: Reset Home Folder permissions and ACLs Error

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  • by Wanttogobacktopc,

    Wanttogobacktopc Wanttogobacktopc Nov 9, 2013 7:31 PM in response to Dessicator
    Level 1 (6 points)
    Nov 9, 2013 7:31 PM in response to Dessicator

    Hi Linc.  I'm sorry but I need assistance again.  I tried to show a video of my daughter to my family this evening on Apple TV, and it asked me to enable Home Sharing in iTunes despite it already being enabled.  I've spent over two hours running through the above checklist and more once again and I still can't access my photos on Apple TV. 

     

    The video resides in my managed Aperture Library, and In iTunes I don't get an error, but when I go to File - Home Sharing - Choose Photos to Share with Apple TV it gets hung up and no options appear (see attached photo).

     

    Screen Shot 2013-11-09 at 5.49.07 PM.png

     

    When I ran repair permissions from Disk Utility (NOT from Startup (Command + Option + R) - Utilities - Terminal) there were hundreds of errors but mainly in iBooks.  I suspect that something happened when I upgraded to Mavericks.  I ran the above code you provided and the result is "43."  Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

  • by ajm_from_WA,

    ajm_from_WA ajm_from_WA Jan 19, 2014 8:18 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (11 points)
    Jan 19, 2014 8:18 AM in response to Linc Davis

    Yay to Linc!  This worked beautifully:

    find ~ $TMPDIR.. \( -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 -o -acl \) 2> /dev/null | wc -l

    { sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null

     

    I used it to help convert a local account into a local network account. 

  • by Darrell1405,

    Darrell1405 Darrell1405 Feb 8, 2014 9:51 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 8, 2014 9:51 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Thanks, Linc Davis!  This fixed my problem permissions on my Home folder.  Bravo!

  • by bimmerite,

    bimmerite bimmerite Apr 30, 2014 11:19 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 30, 2014 11:19 AM in response to Linc Davis

    I've been trying to figure out how to fix my home folder permissions for a while.  What I was missing was the 'chmod -R -N' piece to remove the ACLs.

     

    Trying to save time, I upgraded to an SSD but wanted to use my old HDD for certain folders:  Documents, Pictures, Music, Dropbox, etc.  I didn't want to use it for my full home directory.  I also thought to save time by just making the SSD the boot drive and using the old drive as-is and making the specific folders in the home directory links to the old folders on the HDD.

     

    While this worked, what I didn't anticipate was the old user permissions on the drive.  This ended up being a mess that I could clean up.

     

    I tried the recovery partition method and it just hung or at least sat there for hours and never seemed to complete.  I'm wondering if that was because the the links to a different hard drive than the boot drive.

     

    Your script, though, did beautifully and permissions are all in tip top shape.

     

    Thanks again!

  • by Katcher,

    Katcher Katcher May 4, 2014 6:05 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 4, 2014 6:05 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Hi Linc,

     

    I recently reinstalled Mavericks on my iMac and transferred my settings/datas from a Time Machine backup. Everything seems to run just fine, but it takes 4-5 minutes to boot. I thought it could have something to do with permissions and ACLs since I also changed my home folder name. After following step 1 you provided (terminal command) my system took the usual 15-30 seconds to reboot on the first try but back to 4-5 minutes each time afterwards.

     

    I would deeply appreciate if you could help me solve this issue. Thanks!

  • by ap1216,

    ap1216 ap1216 May 30, 2014 12:59 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 30, 2014 12:59 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Hello Linc,

     

    I realize this is somewhat of an older post but I've been having problems with my user permissions as well. I ran the code that resolved the OP's problem 1st and got the Username$ line to pop up.

     

    I followed it up with the initial line of code that you had asked OP to type out, the one where it checks for the "locked files" and it is showing a "114" number.

     

    I'm not sure exactly how to procede. I've tried moving on to step 2 as well, (restarting the computer under recovery mode) and whenever I hit the RESET button for Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs the button grays out. I've left it for several hours and still the DONE button does not show up for me to click.

     

    Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you!

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root Jun 1, 2014 8:39 AM in response to ap1216
    Level 9 (69,823 points)
    iTunes
    Jun 1, 2014 8:39 AM in response to ap1216

    You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved, less people are likely to look at it. You can link to this one.


  • by pingpong9,

    pingpong9 pingpong9 Jul 4, 2014 1:35 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 4, 2014 1:35 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Hey Linc.  mentioned you might be of help.    This post, here -- tho old -- does seem similar to my problem. Not sure exactly how, though. I'd like to avoid haste and not break something that's not broken...

     

    Is following this advice here a good fit for my issue?

    Many thanks. 

    Re: messed up computer (10.9.4) after migration to SSD - permissions or java problem?

  • by userremoved,

    userremoved userremoved Mar 9, 2015 8:01 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 9, 2015 8:01 AM in response to Linc Davis

    Linc,

     

    Mucho appreciation. Adobe CC apps were taking forever to open and frequently crashing. Used the code line your posted and now everything is opening immediately after first opening, then closing and opening again.

  • by jingletido,

    jingletido jingletido Nov 4, 2014 4:44 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 4, 2014 4:44 AM in response to Linc Davis

    I can't thank you enough for this posting and sharing your knowledge on resetting home folder permissions.  You're a lifesaver!  I was losing my mind in frustration trying to quit a program that was owning my time and efforts.  Your solution completely fixed everything.  I'm so grateful!  Many thanks.

  • by Corey Smith3,

    Corey Smith3 Corey Smith3 Dec 15, 2014 1:46 PM in response to Wanttogobacktopc
    Level 1 (39 points)
    Dec 15, 2014 1:46 PM in response to Wanttogobacktopc

    Link i just wanted to say that this has helped me a TON !!!

    { sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null

     

     

    Thanks a bunch !!!!!

  • by jimfrompeterborough,

    jimfrompeterborough jimfrompeterborough Dec 20, 2014 10:54 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 20, 2014 10:54 AM in response to Linc Davis

    377

  • by unsubscriber,

    unsubscriber unsubscriber May 4, 2015 11:54 AM in response to Wanttogobacktopc
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 4, 2015 11:54 AM in response to Wanttogobacktopc

    1. It's time that Linc Davis had the Apple Discussions Forum named after him. Thanks, as ever! It worked beautifully.

     

    2. A warning to dummies like me: Terminal gives non-Unix people so little feedback, that I failed properly to think/notice when I was asked for my password a second time. The first half of Linc's above long command took a while (say 15 mins? maybe longer?); then I got another password prompt which I ignored, waiting for hours for the process to finish. When I woke up to my idiocy and entered the password again, the second half of the routine took another 15+ mins. FYI I think the Terminal window was titled "chflags" or "chown" for the first half and "chmod" for the second. I don't remember getting three window titles but perhaps I didn't notice. (There are three commands in Linc's routine, separated by semi-colons.)

     

    Some background for people having other trouble:

    (a) I think I have reached the end of my nightmarish weeks with Yosemite! I experienced a lot of buggy behaviour throughout my Mac (lots of force-quitting, slow or non-existent waking, and originally even some hung logging-in), and while different solutions improved things, no solution got rid of them all. I remember one that helped quite a bit, namely following advice I found elsewhere about trashing wifi settings. (This surprised me because I didn't think that was my problem.)
    (b) In the end, after hoping not to have to, I did a clean install, which did improve my Mac's behaviour a lot. Being careful, I did not import my Apps - I just redownloaded and installed them. I only carefully moved over my documents etc., and also then imported my mailboxes into my email app - i.e. I did not import my user Library folder. I do recommend this approach - but stupidly I messed up my settings when using Carbon Copy Cloner for this purpose, thereby putting things in the wrong place and locking myself out of a lot of my folders. A permissions mess!

    (c) I then tried to use the Batchmod app to try to fix this, but this was dumb of me, and ultimately did a better job just using the Finder (Get Info). This, I thought, had fixed it, but in reality I had made things worse, because my home directory required authentication with every write. This meant, for example, that I couldn't install Google Drive or open iTunes.

    (d) Next I repeatedly tried the passwordreset routine (in Recovery Mode) as described by the Original Poster of this thread. Like the OP, this did not fix my problem. Even worse, I became partially locked out of my major Filemaker Pro database! I had permission to do some things but not others, yet it was a master password! This might have been caused by the reset ACLs command in the resetpassword utility, or it might have been that I followed the advice of a website to first run a Terminal command clearing all ACLs.

    (e) Then I found this thread! Hallelujah.

  • by Krioni,

    Krioni Krioni Jun 16, 2015 10:50 AM in response to Wanttogobacktopc
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 16, 2015 10:50 AM in response to Wanttogobacktopc

    Linc,

     

    Do you know if trying this procedure for a user account that is a "Managed" account via Active Directory will cause problems? The account is an Administrator, but I worry that the Active Directory "Managed, Mobile" status could cause problems. It looks like those instructions assume the user is in the "staff" group, but my Managed account has a group number instead.

     

    Are you familiar with any tweaks needed to these instructions for Active Directory Managed accounts?

  • by PS_STI,

    PS_STI PS_STI Dec 7, 2015 4:19 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 7, 2015 4:19 AM in response to Linc Davis

    Hi Everyone,

     

    I ran into a problem with access permissions, that the Disk Utility could not repair. Some applications started behaving strangely, including the Mac OS X default Maill app which for some reason kept showing the "Login failed" message on my gmail account. I initially started to search for threads about the bugs in the Mail app, but then I realized some other strange things appeared in my system. One of them was that even though I could access all my files, whenever I wanted to delete a file, the system kept on asking me about my admin password. I associated the two facts together and figured out something was wrong in the file permissions. And so it was - when I opened the properties of my "Macintosh HD" drive it showed the access list to the drive and there, instead of my user name and access rights, it kept on showing "Fetching...". Like on the screenshot below - it's not from my computer and it is apparently from an older version of the OS X; I have solved the problem but did not make a screenshot when the problem was there.

     

    GroupAssociations.png

     

    I then performed the procedure suggested by Linc Davis but it did not help (even with the optional Step 2).

     

    I though: "Again. Solutions that work for everyone else do not work for me...". In all the desperation I came up with another idea: why not simply log in to another user account with admin rights, open the properties of "Macintosh HD", delete access to the user that kept on displaying "Fetching..." instead of my user name and then assign full R&W privileges to my account, including activating the the option "apply to enclosed folders".

     

    So I did that. I all worked 100% fine and took 5 seconds :-).

     

    What a relief...

     

    WARNING! Before running my simple-but-effective procedure, please ensure the other account (the one you will use to delete the "Fetching..." user and assign R&W back to your account) has full admin rights.

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