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Level 3

569 points

Applications folder owner & permissions

I've just tried to move an application to the Applications folder and I got a prompt asking to authenticate because the folder can not be modified. I'm running as an admin and this is the first time that it has occurred.

I'm running 10.5.8 with all the security updates. Does anyone know if any of the recent updates has changed the owner and permissions of the Applications folder?

Now the owner and permissions in my Applications folder are:

system - Read & Write
wheel - Read only
everyone - Read only

Is this the same for everyone?

Thanks in advanced for any help.

Cheers

15.4 MBP 2.33, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Sep 13, 2010 6:05 PM

36 replies

Oct 17, 2010 2:45 PM in response to Jim-K

I was having the same problem (/Applications was set to 755 which it should be 775, and group was wheel when it should be admin). As far as I know, this happened very recently. Thank you for posting the sudo's. They solved the problem, I believe.

I have two iMacs, both up-to-date according to Software Update. The older iMac (2 GHz Intel Core Duo with Leopard 10.5.8) has the issue, the newer (2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 win Snow Leopard 10.6.4) one does not. So I am wondering if it is a combination of Leopard and iTunes 10.0.1, since the OS version is the only perceptible difference.

sfd_373

Level 1

4 points

Oct 19, 2010 1:44 PM in response to Király

My PowerBook got this problem on September 29th and my PowerMac G5 had the same problem starting 2 days later, around the time I updated iTunes. Hmmm. I applied the fix from Király and all is fixed. Thank you so much.

BRoche

Level 1

0 points

Nov 16, 2010 1:02 PM in response to Rafael Marino

I'm having the same problem. It happened around the 29th September (looking at my time machine) Which going through my updates was around the time I installed iTunes10.
If I run
sudo chmod 775 /Applications
sudo chgrp admin /Applications

this fixes it until I run repair permissions, which then puts it back to wheel.
Going to try reinstalling 10.5.8 combo updater and the iTunes 10.1.
Will see how this goes.

BRoche

Level 1

0 points

Nov 16, 2010 9:08 PM in response to BRoche

I reinstalled the 10.5.8 combo update which fixed my problem.
I rebooted with the shift down so nothing was running that didn't need to be running. Re-applied the 10.5.8 combo update and the permissions are back to what it should be.
Thx

dynamic7

Level 1

0 points

Nov 21, 2010 9:08 PM in response to BobHarris

BobHarris:

My computer isn't showing my password characters as described above. I know I'm entering it correctly, but it still says it's invalid. Any thoughts of what I can do?

Thanks for your help. It's appreciated. I'm on a macbook with latest version of snow leopard and all updates.

BobHarris

Level 9

53,273 points

Nov 22, 2010 4:53 AM in response to dynamic7

My computer isn't showing my password characters as described above. I know I'm entering it correctly, but it still says it's invalid. Any thoughts of what I can do?

What command did you enter? Did it start with 'sudo' ?

Are you using an admin account? You must be using an admin account or sudo will not grant you permission to use elevated privileges.

Are you getting any error messages? What are they?

Message was edited by: BobHarris

Applications folder owner & permissions