Archive Utility.app “Error identifying a writable temporary folder”

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Level 1

2 points

Archive Utility.app “Error identifying a writable temporary folder”

I had to restore my Mac today from a Time Machine backup. Everything went swimmingly, except for now I can't seem to unzip files using Archive Utility.app. In any folder under the root path / on Macintosh HD I get following error:

Error identifying a writable temporary folder. Try moving the archive to another volume.

However, if I move the archive to one of my Firewire external drives and unzip it from there, it works.

I've tried the standard Repair Disk Permissions from Disk Utility, using the diskutil repairpermissions / command and booting into my install disk and trying both of the previous from there. Unfortunatly it didn't solved the problem.

I noticed that when Time Machine restored my Mac the /private folder became visible, so I used Terminal and set it back to hidden. Could there be a problem with the permissions of my /private folder that Repair Disk Permissions hasn't fixed?

Any more suggestions would be ace as I can't seem to find anybody with the same issue via Google. Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Sep 23, 2010 3:27 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

DocSpace

Level 1

4 points

Dec 13, 2012 4:11 PM in response to mmaly

A better and safer syntax is the single command: sudo rm -rf /var/folders/* since if the first line above does not succeed, or is entered in a separate terminal session, the second command will remain pointed at the top level of your home folder by default, effectively telling the computer to ERASE ALL CONTENTS of "~/" your account's home folder. In that event, all personal content - desktop files, downloads, documents, local email storage, music, movies, favorite bookmarks, and so on - will be immediately deleted!

Caution is also recommended, since /var/folders is temporary storage for a lot of applications. At minimum quit any other open applications and be prepared to restart.

Naturally any command involking "sudo" will only run within an administrative account. If you don't have an admin account, if the computer is not your personal property, if the computer returns an error when invoking "sudo" or if you simply have doubts or questions about what each element of these commands does, well that's simply nature's way of saying "call IT."

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Answer 2

Oct 6, 2010 1:22 PM in response to iGreenie

iGreenie wrote:
I had to restore my Mac today from a Time Machine backup. Everything went swimmingly, except for now I can't seem to unzip files using Archive Utility.app. In any folder under the root path / on Macintosh HD I get following error:

Error identifying a writable temporary folder. Try moving the archive to another volume.

Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.

Launch the Terminal utility, then type this command:

ls -l /

(The letters "l" are lower-case letters "L".)

What do you see for private and tmp? On my system they look like this:

drwxr-xr-x@ 6 root wheel 204 May 17 14:50 private

lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 11 May 17 14:37 tmp -> private/tmp

If the values before the "@" signs and the two words between the numbers don't match, that might explain your problem.

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Answer 3

Dj Lien

Level 1

0 points

Oct 27, 2010 11:11 AM in response to iGreenie

I just had this issue & got around it by going in to the terminal, use the MV command to rename /private/tmp folder to tmp.old

Create a new tmp & then give EVERYONE read/write access to this folder. This fixed my issue. I will do a permissions repair later & see if the problem comes back.

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Answer 4

Nov 25, 2010 8:56 AM in response to Dj Lien

Im having the same issue, does anyone know if the above fix works on a perm basis?
And does anyone know why this problem occurs?

Its just cropped up in my user environment and i cant work it out....

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Answer 5

Dec 29, 2010 7:43 AM in response to JWT London

adding admin group with recursive read and write access to '/private/var/folders' via folder information fixed this for my admin user.

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Answer 6

mmaly

Level 1

4 points

Feb 25, 2011 11:06 AM in response to iGreenie

cd /var/folders
sudo rm -rf *

... worked for me.

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Answer 7

Jul 2, 2011 8:50 AM in response to mmaly

mmaly wrote:

cd /var/folders
sudo rm -rf *

This solved my issue.

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Answer 8

Oct 6, 2011 7:08 PM in response to mmaly

Thank you, this worked for me, too.

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Answer 9

INN0V8T

Level 1

0 points

Nov 8, 2011 1:44 PM in response to tompuserve

@group:

"adding admin group with recursive read and write access to '/private/var/folders' via folder information fixed this for my admin user."

How do you do this? And sorry but I am trying to figure out what directory '/private/var/folders' points to on the HD. I am a novice... but I am thirsty to learn.

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