Locked disk icon in sidebar & disk utility no help

Question

Locked disk icon in sidebar & disk utility no help

I have read of others' problems with permissions. I too am having one now. The disk icon in the sidebar is locked. Get info on disk and click to unlock, verify password. The permissions section says custom access for each user type: .....(Me), (unknown), and everyone.

Then try to use Disk Utility. Will let me repair the disk with no problems found. But repair permissions is grayed out.

Per another thread tried to run Terminal command: chflags nouchg /Volumes/* but got permission denied.

What next? Thanks in advance.

Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5, Mac OS X (10.5.4), 2.5GB / TB plus HDD

Posted on Jul 9, 2008 9:38 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Jul 9, 2008 9:44 AM in response to Christopher Graham

is this your main disk or a secondary one?

try the following in terminal from an admin account:

for the main one:

sudo chflags nouchg /

and for a secondary:

sudo chflags nouchg /Volumes/"disk-name"

put the name of the disk in the above and keep the quotes. you'll have to enter your admin password, which you won't see. that's normal.

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Answer 2

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Jul 9, 2008 9:49 AM in response to Christopher Graham

If you want a nice GUI to work with ownership, look at Batchmod
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/6440/batchmod

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Answer 3

Jul 9, 2008 9:51 AM in response to V.K.

Secondary disk. Startup disk had similar problem but was able to verify and repair permissions.

Ran command and response was:

Macintosh-2:~ paulgraham$ sudo chflags nouchg /Volumes/"Help"
sudo: /var/db/sudo writable by non-owner (040777), should be mode 0700

WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss
or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your
typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.

To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.

Password:
Macintosh-2:~ paulgraham$

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Answer 4

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Jul 9, 2008 9:57 AM in response to Christopher Graham

that should do it (you might have to restart) to see the changes.
to double-check run

ls -ladeO /Volumes/Help

and post the results.

I'm puzzled by the message about permissions on sudo itself. did you try to do something drastic to permissions on your main drive like using "apply to enclosed items" button on the whole drive?

Message was edited by: V.K.

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Answer 5

Jul 9, 2008 10:08 AM in response to V.K.

You could probably replace the word drastic with stupid, eh. But yes you are right, I did. I was having problems with permissions that disk utility would not fix. <:-|

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Answer 6

Jul 9, 2008 10:10 AM in response to Christopher Graham

ran as you said, response:

Macintosh-2:~ paulgraham$ ls -ladeO /Volumes/Help
drw-rw-rw- 48 root admin - 1700 Jul 1 00:49 /Volumes/Help
Macintosh-2:~ paulgraham$

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