Padlock on Hard Drive icon

Question

Level 2

185 points

Padlock on Hard Drive icon

My internal and external hard drive all of sudden have padlocks in the lower left corner of there icon. What does this mean, and how can I remove it?

PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Mar 31, 2009 4:52 PM

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Answer 1

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:13 PM in response to James Rydings

It usually means a permissions problem
Run disk utility and repair permissions and verify HD while you are at it.
Also check your console logs to see if anything strange happened.
If you regularly run the system as administrator, you may have accidentally changed permissions of the drives.
Right click one of them select Get Info and see what the permissions are.
The should be:
System Read & Write
Admin Read & Write
everyone Read only

Don't change them but if they are not what I posted, let us know.

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Answer 2

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:21 PM in response to James Rydings

run the following commands in terminal

sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/*

sudo chmod a+x /Volumes/*

you'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) after the first command. that's normal. this should unlock the drives.

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Answer 3

James Rydings Author

Level 2

185 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:23 PM in response to nerowolfe

Thanks for your reply. Right after posting I checked my permissions and they look weird. This is what I have:

James (Me): Custom
admin: Custom
James (Me): Read & Write
(unknown): Read & Write
Everyone: Read only

I also have Ignore ownership on this volume selected.
I am consequently unable to edit any files on my hard drive. I have the same exact problems with two partitions on an external hard drive.

I tried to change my user and admin to Read & Right but it wouldn't allow me (nothing happened). I then tried booting in firewire mode and doing it from another machine but that hasnt worked.
Any ideas?

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Answer 4

James Rydings Author

Level 2

185 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:32 PM in response to V.K.

Will that fix my external volumes also, or just my internal?

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Answer 5

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:33 PM in response to James Rydings

James Rydings wrote:
Will that fix my external volumes also, or just my internal?

it will work on all drives.

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Answer 6

James Rydings Author

Level 2

185 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:39 PM in response to V.K.

Thank you VK that solved it. My permissions now read:
admin: Read & Write
system: Read & Write
admin: Read & Write
everyone: Read only

Is it normal for admin to be in there twice? Should I delete on of them or just leave it?

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Answer 7

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:41 PM in response to James Rydings

James Rydings wrote:
Thank you VK that solved it. My permissions now read:
admin: Read & Write
system: Read & Write
admin: Read & Write
everyone: Read only

Is it normal for admin to be in there twice? Should I delete on of them or just leave it?

no that's not normal but don't delete anything just yet.

run the following terminal command and post the results. it will list the current permissions and ACLs on it

ls -aldeO /volumes/"drive name"

put the name of the drive in the above. KEEP the quotes.

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Answer 8

James Rydings Author

Level 2

185 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:44 PM in response to V.K.

This was the result:
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin - 1 Mar 31 17:27 /volumes/Macintosh HD -> /

The admin appears twice in my externals also.

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Answer 9

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:50 PM in response to James Rydings

I don't understand why admin would appear twice here. there are no ACLs on that drive. still admin should have write rights to your main drive so run

sudo chmod g+w /

and leave it alone. don't do anything else with the permissions on the main drive. repeat the other command with the external drive

ls -aldeO /volumes/"drive name"

what are the result there?

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Answer 10

James Rydings Author

Level 2

185 points

Mar 31, 2009 5:56 PM in response to V.K.

The external has three partitions. These are the results for each partition:

drwxrwxr-x+ 55 root admin - 1938 Mar 26 21:13 /volumes/Alicias Backup HD
0: group:admin allow list,add file,search,add_subdirectory,deletechild,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity

drwxrwxr-x+ 30 jamesrydings jamesrydings - 1088 Mar 26 20:34 /volumes/Mac OS X Install Disc
0: DAA6BD34-55DC-11D9-98B8-000A95D65C00 allow list,add file,addsubdirectory,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity
1: group:admin allow list,add file,addsubdirectory,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity

drwxrwxr-x@ 42 root admin - 1496 Mar 31 14:55 /volumes/Leopard Install Test
0: DAA6BD34-55DC-11D9-98B8-000A95D65C00 allow list,add file,search,add_subdirectory,deletechild,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity
1: group:admin allow list,add file,search,add_subdirectory,deletechild,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity

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Answer 11

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Mar 31, 2009 6:03 PM in response to James Rydings

ok, there are a bunch of ACLs that can be safely deleted. run

sudo chmod -N /Volumes/*

that should be all.

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Answer 12

James Rydings Author

Level 2

185 points

Mar 31, 2009 6:07 PM in response to V.K.

That has solved it thank you. Out of interest what are ACLs, and how do they get created?

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Answer 13

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Mar 31, 2009 6:13 PM in response to James Rydings

ACLs are access control lists.

these are ACLs for example that you had on one of the drives

0: DAA6BD34-55DC-11D9-98B8-000A95D65C00 allow list,add file,addsubdirectory,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity
1: group:admin allow list,add file,addsubdirectory,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity

they are extended attributes that allow setting more refined rights for various users and groups than regular POSIX permissions. they don't look different from regular permissions in GUI when you look at the get info panel but are different under the hood which can be seen from terminal.
see this link for a more detailed explanation
http://www.bresink.de/osx/193281/Docs-en/ACL.html

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Answer 14

James Rydings Author

Level 2

185 points

Mar 31, 2009 6:14 PM in response to V.K.

I will read into it, thanks for all you help.

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Answer 15

dehlman

Level 1

0 points

Mar 31, 2009 7:50 PM in response to James Rydings

Hi, Ironically enough - I had the same issue today. I've just upgraded to 10.5 over the weekend and worked fine this morning. I went to apply permissions to a folder and it turns out all of my mounted drives got padlocked. I could access the folders through root admin, but would not allow me to change the privileges. they all had "Custom" as their settings For every drive. If I run the terminal command, would that clear up my similar situation? I called everyone I knew that were mac gurus and no one has heard of this happening, but if found this discussion and was relieved that i wasn't the only one.

Thanks

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