Who Shoud Be The Owner Of The Boot Disk?

Question

Who Shoud Be The Owner Of The Boot Disk?

My system has several drives with several partitions. I noticed, via Get Info, on the boot driver that the owner is set to "system". Is that correct? Shouldn't be set to my user account?

I'm asking this question because I just installed Adobe Photoshop CS3 and it won't launch. It says "Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is not available."

I've searched several sites on this issue and one recomended fix is to ignore permisions on the scratch drive. I made that change to all but the boot drive, which I believe you cannot do.

However, I'm wondering if having the Owner of the boot drive as "system" might be causing this issue.

Should I change Owner to my account?
Or is system to correct owner?

G5 Dual 2.5 GHZ, 4.5 MB , GeForce 6800 Ultra, Sonnet SATA 4+4, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Mar 9, 2008 12:14 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 9, 2008 12:17 PM in response to Kevin-WinXP-Free

Kevin (WinXP Free) wrote:
I noticed, via Get Info, on the boot driver that the owner is set to "system". Is that correct?

Yes. Don't change it or you risk it no longer booting.

If you suspect permissions on your boot disk are wrong, Disk Utility's Repair Permissions will always put them right.

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Answer 2

Mar 9, 2008 12:24 PM in response to Michael Conniff

Thanks for the reply Micheal.

I've run disk utilities several times.
Rebooted.
Removed the Photoshop preferences, more than once.
Installed the Photoshop update.
Launched Photoshop with Control CommandShift to erase preferences.

I've tried many things, based on what I could find from other users with similar issues.

Nothing has worked. So I thought I would check to see if the ownership settings were correct.

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Answer 3

Mar 9, 2008 12:40 PM in response to Kevin-WinXP-Free

Well hopefully someone will come along who also owns a current Photoshop (mine is very old and won't run on OS X 😟 ).

You can double check using Terminal if you like: copy and paste the following into the Terminal window followed by a return:

ls -ld /

You should see something like

drwxrwxr-t 32 root admin 1190 Feb 16 21:05 /

which shows the disk belongs to root, a.k.a. system, and to the admin group. Make sure your permissions are also as shown.

Otherwise you may need to try the Adobe forums.

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Answer 4

Mar 9, 2008 12:44 PM in response to Michael Conniff

Here's what I got from Terminal.

drwxrwxr-t 41 root admin 1496 Mar 9 08:44 /

I'm not sure what the "41" means.

But it appears permissions are correct.
Owner is root and the group is admin.

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Answer 5

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,690 points

Mar 9, 2008 2:06 PM in response to Kevin-WinXP-Free

I just installed Adobe Photoshop CS3 and it won't launch. It says "Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is not available."

Not sure about CS3, but with CS and CS2, that can be caused by designating another partition as a scratch drive that has no ownership set. If you're using another drive or partition as a scratch drive, do a Get Info on it and make sure the check box is off for "Ignore ownership for this volume".

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Answer 6

Mar 9, 2008 4:33 PM in response to Kevin-WinXP-Free

Kevin (WinXP Free) wrote:
Here's what I got from Terminal.

Yes, the oownership and permissions are fine

I'm not sure what the "41" means.

Don't worry too much about that: it is just the number of entries in the directory listing (including otherwise invisible files). So the fact that your number is more than mine merely says you have more files/folders at the top level.

I'm glad Kurt has joined in—he knows a lot more about Adobe stuff than me 😉

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Answer 7

Mar 10, 2008 3:37 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Since I've never been able to launch CS3, I'm not sure which drive it's trying to use as the scratch disk.

I have tried several things. First I set all the drives/partitions (except for the boot drive) to ignore ownership, box is checked. That didn't work.

Then I unchecked the box on all but the non-boot drive. That didn't work.

I even set the ownership to my account and left the box unchecked. That didn't work either.

The error message appears to be an ownership issue, but I can't seem to find the correct setting.

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Answer 8

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,690 points

Mar 10, 2008 6:15 AM in response to Kevin-WinXP-Free

Since I've never been able to launch CS3, I'm not sure which drive it's trying to use as the scratch disk.

That being the case, then that's not the problem. By default, PS uses the boot drive as the only scratch disk. Though according to Adobe's forums, ownership issues are the only thing that causes this error.

Here's a few things people there have done to fix the problem. Try them in this order.

1) Repair Permissions on your startup drive.

2) Delete Photoshop's preferences. In the Preferences folder of your user account, delete the entire folder, "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Settings".

3) Download and apply the 10.4.11 Combo updater. Repair permissions both before applying the update and after. Delete Photoshop's preferences before trying to launch it.

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Answer 9

Mar 11, 2008 4:06 AM in response to Kurt Lang

Kurt,

I repaired permisions, deleted the PS preferences folder, repaired permisions, installed 10.4.11 Combo update, repaired permisions and it worked.

Many thanks.

I have a feeling reinstalling the combo update fixed it. When I did that and went into Disk Utility, I noticed the order of my drives changed. Not sure why, but I'm guessing that had something to do with it.

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Answer 10

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,690 points

Mar 11, 2008 6:22 AM in response to Kevin-WinXP-Free

Glad to hear it's straightened out.

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