What permissions should ~/Library/Preferences have?

Question

Level 1

20 points

What permissions should ~/Library/Preferences have?

I copied my entire home folder over from a backup and I've been having a variety of permissions issues. One that is particularly annoying is when I try to save any of my preferences in Mail, I get this response:

"Error Saving Preferences

Writing your preferences to disk has failed. Your preferences may not have been saved. The permissions on ~/Library/Preferences may be wrong or your disk may be full."

I checked the permissions on this folder through Finder and it shows I have read and write, so there must be something else going on behind the scene.

Anyone know what permissions this folder should have and how I would set them?

Thanks!

MBP C2D & Mac Mini 1.25ghz, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Jul 3, 2010 6:35 AM

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Answer 1

lkrupp

Level 7

22,639 points

Jul 3, 2010 7:05 AM in response to Dreadnought

The solution may be as simple as opening Disk Utility and clicking "Repair Permissions". At least try that first and see what happens.

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Answer 2

Dreadnought Author

Level 1

20 points

Jul 3, 2010 7:11 AM in response to lkrupp

I wish it was! It repaired some stuff, but it didn't help with the Mail error... I've been doing some browsing in these forums and have seen people mention that the Repair Permissions only works for the application files and folders, not files and folders related specifically to the user like ~/Library/Preferences.

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Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Jul 3, 2010 7:18 AM in response to Dreadnought

Download BATCHMOD freeware and see what is going on. Very easy with its GUI intuitive interface.

Because it is an OWNERSHIP iss.

Has nothing to do with the system receipts left from installers that PERMISSIONS handle.

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Answer 4

Dreadnought Author

Level 1

20 points

Jul 3, 2010 7:56 AM in response to The hatter

I had actually already run BatCHmod and set my entire folder in Users to RWX for myself w/ "Change ownership..." and "Apply to enclosed..." checked. I just did it again and I still can't save my Mail preferences.

Should I try "Clear ACLs..." and "Clear xattrs"?

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Answer 5

Dreadnought Author

Level 1

20 points

Jul 3, 2010 8:37 AM in response to Dreadnought

This just gets more complicated... I just noticed that iTunes seemed to hang on "Syncing Contacts" with my iPhone so I removed Contacts from the iPhone sync options. Then the calendar syncing seemed to hang too so I just removed that as well. I'm willing to bet this is permissions related. Music seems to sync fine.

Any ideas on what permissions need to be (and where) to successfully sync contacts and calendar?

Thanks for the suggestions!

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Answer 6

Dreadnought Author

Level 1

20 points

Jul 3, 2010 8:41 AM in response to Dreadnought

I just got an error message from iTunes that it couldn't save a backup on my computer. Since my permissions/ownership are already set for me to have RWX for my entire Users folder I'm not sure what else to do?

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Answer 7

KJK555

Level 4

2,906 points

Jul 3, 2010 12:06 PM in response to Dreadnought

~/Library and ~/Library/Preferences should have:

owner:(you) - read and write
everyone - no access

better known as: chmod 700

Be sure you own the files in there as well

Sometimes, (rarely, for whatever reason), pref. files will get changed to root ownership

To correct ownership on all files in the ~/Library/Preferences directory,
open terminal, at the prompt:
sudo chown -R <your username>: ~/Library/Preferences
example (if short user name is "joe"):
sudo chown -R joe: ~/Library/Preferences

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Answer 8

Dreadnought Author

Level 1

20 points

Jul 4, 2010 3:42 AM in response to KJK555

No dice... looks like I need to install everything from scratch. Can't save Mail preferences, create iTunes iPhone backups, sync tasks or calendars, etc. even after running sudo chown -R (my username): ~/Library/Preferences. I did copy my entire home folder over from an external hard drive as root when this all started, so maybe that's what screwed everything up?

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Answer 9

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,306 points

Jul 4, 2010 5:48 AM in response to Dreadnought

[Here is a good MacFixIt article on resetting Home folder permissions correctly|http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329971-263.html]. Apple has one also, but I can never find those articles. For the commands, just copy and paste them into your Terminal window so that you don't make a typo. The backticks (`) are important and are not regular apostrophes.

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Answer 10

Dreadnought Author

Level 1

20 points

Jul 4, 2010 5:56 AM in response to Barney-15E

Awesome, I'll try that!

I just tried to change the filename of a document on my Desktop, but got an error that I didn't have permission, even though Finder shows me with Read and Write. Here's what ls -al says:

-rwxr--r--@ 1 (my username) staff 249418 Jun 30 09:06 (my filename).pages

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Answer 11

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,306 points

Jul 4, 2010 6:01 AM in response to Dreadnought

That doesn't indicate a problem, so it may be the Desktop Folder permissions.

ls -ale

will show all the permissions for your Home folder. You should get this for all of your Home folders except Sites and Public:

drwx------+ 43 username staff 1462 Jun 29 16:25 Desktop
 0: group:everyone deny delete

which will have these posix permissions:

drwxr-xr-x+

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Answer 12

Dreadnought Author

Level 1

20 points

Jul 4, 2010 6:17 AM in response to Dreadnought

I ran through those instructions and now everything works! Thanks for the link.

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