Permission Settings

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Level 1

4 points

Permission Settings

Hi, Since installing Catalina, I'm unable to change the permissions settings in Get Info for my main hard drive. I'm able to unlock it, but when I select Read & Write, I get a pop up that I don't have permission. There is only one account on the computer. When I open Users & Accounts in the System Prefs, I see "Allow user to administer this computer" is checked, but grayed out (maybe because only one account). I tried the terminal command recommended in another thread here on this forum, and it clearly ran the process, but upon restarting, the problem still exists. I tried to fix permissions in Disk Utility, but when I open the app, it just shows information without any options to do anything. Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Thank you!

Posted on Jun 10, 2021 12:51 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,560 points

Jun 10, 2021 1:24 AM in response to SaudiEvan

macOS Catalina effectively splits your SSD into two partitions, Macintosh HD

and Macintosh HD - Data.

Open Disk Utility from your Applications> Utilities folder.

Click view in the menubar and select Show All Devices.

Macintosh HD is for the System and is set as Read Only, this cannot be changed,

nor can the permissions for any of the folders and files contained.

Macintosh HD - Data is for your personal data etc and is set as Read & Write.

The two partitions are consolidated as one on the Desktop as Macintosh HD,

if you want to change the permissions on the Macintosh HD - Data partition

you would to double-click on the icon on the Desktop which opens a

Finder window, your data is in the Users folder.

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Answer 2

SaudiEvan Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 10, 2021 2:40 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Eau Rouge -

Thanks for your quick and accurate response. I was able to do what I needed to do but I have an extended question. How do I as the administrator now keep full control of the options that the system has? I'm not planning on going in and playing with or changing things but I'm wondering if there is a way to take back that control. Is it possible?

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Answer 3

BobHarris

Level 9

53,741 points

Jun 10, 2021 4:47 AM in response to SaudiEvan

Not while normally booted into macOS. The read-only boot volume is not allowed to be read/write.

maybe from single user mode, or booting from the recovery partition you may be able to use a terminal interface to affect some files.

but messing with permissions is likely to screw things up.

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Permission Settings

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