Error Saving Preferences?

First do a Repair Permissions, and then report.

Ernie

Have you tried running Verify Disk or Repair Disk from the install disk? Something is amiss in your directories.

Ernie

I'm having the exact same problem. Getting the same error from mail.app.

I cannot save any preferences: Cannot change desktop pic, dock changes not persisted, widget changes not persisted,cannot change rss feeds in New Fire. My Mobile Me Calendar sync is getting a bit wonky with it not deleting items, this may or may not be the same problem.

Basically my machine is stuck the way it is now and now amount of yelling will make it change.

I've opened the file ~/Library/Prefrences/com.apple.desktop.plist and made a trivial change, but when I try to save the change it says I don't have permission. When I look at the permissions on the file (using Get Info), it says I have Read & Write and Everyone has No Access.

When I ran Repair / Verify permissions I gave some warnings about ACL's on the Application and Preferences directory that were not expected. This is what it said...

ACL found but not expected on "private/var/log".
ACL found but not expected on "Applications".
ACL found but not expected on "Library".

I found some info on the web and deleted them. I just checked and they are back, here is part of the listing from ~/Library using "ls -leh"

drwx------+ 196 aaron staff 6.5K 15 Jan 22:48 Preferences
0: group:everyone deny add file,delete,add_subdirectory,deletechild,writeattr,writeextattr,chown
1: group:everyone deny delete

drwx------+ 2 aaron staff 68B 15 Mar 2008 Screen Savers
0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------+ 2 aaron staff 68B 15 Mar 2008 Sounds
0: group:everyone deny delete

There are 15 "1: group:everyone deny delete" ACL's in ~/Library. Last time there were only the 3 above which I deleted.

Looking in the preferences folder only a few files have been modified today. First are the files for my stinking 3G mobile net connection, and others are half a dozed apple preferences inside the "By Hosts" directory.

The biggest change I've made to my mac in the last few weeks is use the 3G modem. The SW was already installed but I did not use it.

Any help appreciated as this is a real pain and I dont want to re-install 5 days before travelling for a month.

Cheers
Aaron

Message was edited by: Aaron Morton

Aaron,

You need to run Verify Disk, and see if any problems are noted -- this is NOT permissions, btw.

Ernie

I've just updated the post to include the message from the last time I ran Verify Disk. But I'll run it again and see.

Was jut doing some more reading, the ACL applies to the directory but I've not worked out if it can be inherited.

Thanks

Aaron,

I don't see any report of results from Verify Disk -- only Verify Permissions. Definitely not the same thing!

Did I miss something?

Ernie

While verify disk is running here is part of the "ls -leh" output for ~/Library/Preferences:

-rw------- 1 aaron staff 1.5K 13 Jan 21:54 com.apple.desktop.plist

When I open that file in the Property Editor and add a dummy property, then try to save it I get the error.

"
The document “com.apple.desktop.plist” could not be saved. You do not have appropriate access privileges.

To view or change access privileges, select the item in Finder and choose File > Get Info.
"

I know only just enough about unix/linux/osx be dangerous but I believe I should have permission to save the file. Is that correct?

Aaron

Ah, OK, thanks. Will run the correct one now.

Aaron

Here is the output from Verify Disk.

Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”

Performing live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.

Am running the Verify Permissions again as well.

Aaron

Aaron,

Let's do a test.

Create a New User Account, and as that New User launch Mail and try setting up one of your email accounts. See the following if not familiar with adding a new user account:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8235.html

The reason for doing this is to test the Mail app itself, and not to permanently switch to a new user account. Tell me if the behavior continues in that New User Account? If you set up a POP account, be sure to select for it to leave messages on the server after download.

Ernie

Sorry, had to break for dinner.

I've created another (standard) account and was able to do the things I cannot do under my account:

- Changed desktop pic
- Made a manual modification to the desktop preferences file
- Setup an email account and modified settings in mail.app

Thanks for your help.

Aaron

Aaron,

Return your normal User Account, and quit Mail. Then in the Finder, open Home/Library/Preferences and locate the com.apple.mail.plist file and drag it to the Desktop -- probably for later deletion. Relaunch Mail, which will open and though New. Decline to Import anything if and when prompted, but instead re-enter your account set up info. Mail should then rediscover the existing account folder, and any corruption (likely) in the plist file (which will recreated) will be gone.

For complete safety, control-click on the Mail folder, and choose to make a duplicate, and drag that resulting copy of the folder to your Desktop for temporary backup.

Ernie