Permissions issue after SuperDuper clone transfer

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Level 1

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Permissions issue after SuperDuper clone transfer

Hi folks

I upgraded to a new hard drive yesterday (old one was full) and used SuperDuper! to create a mirror of the old drive onto the new one. The transfer seemed to work except for a bunch of applications aren't working correctly.

Examples:

1) Entourage gives me a (-5000) error "Could not change that identity" followed by a "You don't not have write access to the entourage folder. To run entourage, you must have the administrative user remove the Identities folder from the applications folder."

2) Firefox gives me an SSL error and on start gives me a "Could not initialize the application's security component. The most likely cause is problems with files in your application's profile directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and your hard disk is not full or close to full. etc." Both Chrome and Firefox give me "could not access user information." errors.

I thought it might be a permissions issue, but disk utility is not letting me fix or verify permissions on the new drive.

These are the obvious issues, but there may be more. I should also note that the desktop was re-arranged and the toolbar reset to standard applications and moved from where i usually keep it. I have the suspicion that some vital information from the old drive didn't get transfered.

I wonder if I formatted incorrectly before cloning the old drive and making the switch?

I still have the old drive, of course and could switch it back out and start from scratch, but if anyone has any suggestions, i'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

Macbook Pro 3,1, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Nov 4, 2010 6:13 PM

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Answer 1

S.U.

Level 6

9,601 points

Nov 4, 2010 6:36 PM in response to Lucfmnt

Not sure what's going on here, but there's no need to swap the drive out again. You can just place the old drive in an enclosure, boot from it, and re-clone to the internal.

Here's an article that will tell you about how to format the new drive:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1885474&tstart=60

You could reformat the new drive and then try again.

I am wondering if the old drive might have some sort of problems from being too full that may have led to corruption of some sort during the cloning process. It might not hurt to repair the old drive and to repair permissions on the old drive before trying again. Also, be sure to empty the trash to free up as much space as possible on it.

Good luck!

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Answer 2

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Nov 4, 2010 6:48 PM in response to Lucfmnt

First, permissions errors within your Home folder are not repaired by Disk Utility. DU only repairs permissions on system files and folders.

Select your new drive and Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Permissions and Sharing section in the lower left corner is a checkbox labeled, "Ignore permissions on this volume." If the box is checked then click on the lock icon to authenticate then uncheck the box and click on the lock icon to lock it. Look at the assigned permissions. They should be as follows:

Owner=system with r/w privileges
Group=admin with r/w privileges
Everyone is read-only

If that's not what you see then open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and enter the following commands pressing RETURN after each:

sudo chown root:admin (Now drag your drive's icon into the Terminal window and press RETURN.)

You will be prompted to enter your admin password which will not be echoed.

killall Finder

For the Enourage issue see:

There's a permissions bug in Entourage. Go to the folder named Entourage Temp in the Microsoft User Data section of your Documents. Check that the permissions read that you're the owner and you have read/write access. You can check a folder/file's permissions by selecting it and pressing COMMAND-I.

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Answer 3

Lucfmnt Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 4, 2010 9:43 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks all for your advice.

I smart updated the drive again with Super Duper, telling it to repair permissions on the old drive first then boot from the new drive.

Sadly, none of the above mentioned solutions worked. Neither do any of Mozilla's solutions for the firefox SSL security errors and user information errors.

All of the permissions seem to be as they should be; read/write across the board.

The killall Finder terminal command responded with " no matching processes belonging to you were found."

I'm continuing to trouble shoot, but at the moment I'm at a loss for ideas.

Any thoughts that wiping the new drive and transferring again via dmg is better than a clone from SuperDuper! ?

thanks again!

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Answer 4

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Nov 5, 2010 9:42 AM in response to Lucfmnt

I'm puzzled by the issue and think the problem originates in the original system you cloned. I also don't get the "no process" error from "killall Finder" which should just relaunch the Finder.

As I said earlier there's no point trying to use DU or SD to repair permissions because doing so has no effect on the Home folder. I wouldn't try re-cloning from the old system either because of what I said above. Instead let's try this:

First, select your drive's Desktop icon and Press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. In the bottom section, Permissions and Sharing, in the lower left corner is a checkbox labeled, "Ignore permissions on this volume." If there's a check in the box then click on the lock icon and authenticate, then uncheck the box and click on the lock icon.

Second, do the following:

Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder. At the command line prompt paste the following command line:

sudo chown -R `id -un`:`id -gn` ~

Press RETURN. You will be prompted to enter your admin password which will not be echoed.

Third:

Boot into single-user mode and at the prompt enter these commands pressing RETURN after each:

mount -uw /
chown root:admin /
chmod 1775 /
reboot

After rebooting Set the following Directory permissions. You can paste these lines or enter by hand, but be careful to enter them correctly.

sudo su

Enter your admin password when prompted.

chown root:admin /Applications
chmod 0775 /Applications
chown root:admin /Library
chmod 1775 /Library
chown root:admin /System
chmod 0775 /System
chown root:admin /Users
chmod 0775 /Users
chmod -R -N /Applications
chown -R :admin /Applications/*

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Answer 5

Lucfmnt Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2010 11:04 AM in response to Kappy

Great Success!!!! Thank you so much!

Firefox and chrome fixed!

Entourage fixed!

I only did the single-user commands, but not the permission resets; should I do those anyway even though the problems went away?

Fyi, in the single-user mode the command "mount-uw/" returned "no such file ore directory exists".

Can you tell me what was wrong that these commands I don't understand fixed?

Thanks again! hooray!

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Answer 6

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Nov 5, 2010 11:25 AM in response to Lucfmnt

If all is well then no need. Your error with the mount command was you omitted the spaces - mount space_-uw_space/ - mount -uw /.

It can't hurt to do all the permissions resets, but if everything is now working OK, they probably aren't needed. Keep them around just in case.

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Answer 7

Lucfmnt Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2010 3:01 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy,

Just after I ran the commands that fixed the security fixes, typing began to seriously lag when multiple application windows were open (particularly microsoft windows like entourage, word, excel etc., but not exclusive to them). To the point that typing will backlog for up to 45 seconds then appear in chunks, no matter what application (text edit, firefox, entourage, word.)

Is it possible any of the single-user commands effected that?

I went to the apple store and the couldn't figure it out. All diagnostics point to hardware is good and OS is running properly. I mentioned the command fixes you helped with and they said that all terminal and single-user mechanisms were outside their jurisdiction.

thanks!

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Answer 8

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Nov 5, 2010 3:18 PM in response to Lucfmnt

Possibly if you entered them incorrectly as you did with the first one. Have you just tried rebooting the computer, then open Disk Utility and repair permissions.

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Answer 9

Lucfmnt Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2010 4:16 PM in response to Kappy

rebooting the computer resets whatever's happening so typing returns to normal. as soon as i open multiple application windows, typing lags substantially and does not return to normal until I reboot again, even if I close applications.

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Answer 10

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Nov 5, 2010 6:14 PM in response to Lucfmnt

Then there must be something else going on. One thing you can do is download a utility like Leopard Cache Cleaner - CNet Downloads or MacUpdate - and use it to clean all system, user, and font caches. See if that fixes it. If not, then create a new user account and log into that new account to see if the typing lag is fixed. If so then the problem is related to something in your user account.

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Answer 11

Lucfmnt Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2010 7:15 PM in response to Kappy

thanks again for all your incredible help.

i spent a few hours on the forums and tried a few different things. ultimately, i had always planned on upgrading to snow leopard, and having just done that it seems to have fixed things. Inactive RAM still seems to be climbing rather quickly, but the forums have dissenting opinions on whether or not that's actually significant. In any case, the lag is gone things seem to be running smoothly.

Thanks again!

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