Hi Guys a few things that maybe very helpful that have occurred since we upgraded several production systems to Lion 10.7 and 10.7.1.
The issue with the behaviour of the wacom Intious tables reflected in other forums is seemingly remedied with a 13 Sept 2011 update of the driver from wacom. You can find it here
at http://cdn.wacom.com/U/drivers/mac/pro/WacomTablet_6.1.7-4.dmg
Seems to work fine for my Intuos 3 tablet as it did prior to our Lion 10.7 upgrades from Snow Leopard 10.6.8.
Now the issue reflected in this link seems to be affecting not only this component (wacom) but also many other items and it is die to the ACL's (access control lists) and file permissions in the seeminly "main"/first admin user of a Lion 10.7(.1) system that ws UPGRADED form SNOW LEOPARD.
I have no explanatation WHY this is the case however we have just gone through the following to repair/reinstate the ACL's and file permissions.
1) Symptoms: basically applications settings made in the application (chaneg prefs etc) are NOT maintain over subsequent restarts (launches) of the particular application. An example would be that the wacom prefs in the ~/Library/Preferences are not updated after a preference modification. In such a case the changes are thus never changed in the ~/library/preferences/ xxx.plists.. you get the idea.
We found various "file access denied" messages in /var/logs (see the console.app for this) for many apps after we upgraded to lion from snow leopard. ALso many "cant save bla-bla because you dont have access to the file ...bla blah."
2) Diagnosis: ok very easy to see. A simple view of these objects (files) and their directories will show in some cases that the use that you are logged into does not seem to have READ/WRITE access.. finder.app (+i/ get info) in finder .. reveale "sharing and permissions".
Also a unix command ls -als reveals some more details.
However, what is strange (and has been reported on these forums in other threads) is that an access for "everybody" as "custom" seems to be unusual.
Anyway this is all easily fixed...
3) Remedy:
Try this first.. it seems to work consistently:
Work Instruction #1 (found in another thread)
Step A: in the user you are having trouble with (eg you have logged into this user). In this example this user is called "fred"
Step B: fire up the /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app to get into the unix bash shell .. (easy to use)
Step C: enter the following unix commands in the terminal.app window one at a time and press "return". some will take many minutes... but be patient. Also so be very careful as these are invoked under root using sudo! Change "fred" to you user!
cd /users
sudo chflags -R nouchg fred/
sudo chmod -R 775 fred/
sudo chmod -RN fred/
sudo chown -R fred:staff fred/
What these commands actually do:
- cmd #1 point the current directory to /users
- cmd #2 cleans up / removed any locks from all the objects in all the folder in fred's home directory
- cmd #3 corrects the file permissions in freds home directory
- cmd #4 just removes any access control lists (ACL's) from the files in fred's home directory and all subordinate folders and files
- cmd #5 sets the ownership of all the files folders and subordinate files and folders to be fred in freds home directory.
Step D: restart your mac and log back into you user (in this case user 'fred")
you will notice that your ~/library/ folder is now NOT HIDDEN in the finder. Lion 10.7 has it hidden by default so that you dont really want to fool with it. If you still want to hide it (As we do) issue the following command to HIDE the ~/library in the finder. You will see it hidden immediately. (Turn it off and as you like)
sudo chflags hidden ~/Library/
Workaround #2 - RESET a users home directory ACS's this is documented in several threads.... I have copied it here. We tried this as well and works on one Lion image ok...
Don't be scared to try this. It is simple and works fine as long as you follow the instructions.
1. restart your Lion 10.7(.1) mac and Hold down +R (command+r) while restarting Lion. Lion will restart in the Lion recovery partition and you will see the grey linen look.... (dont freak out 🙂 )
2. From the Utility menu (at top of screen). mouse down and select "Terminal" app and start it. The terminal.app window will appear and it will be in root mode prompt "..#".
3. In the Terminal window, type the command: resetpassword
4. The will start the resetpassword utility.. (YOU WILL NOT CHANGING THE PASSWORD!) it has the RESET ACLS interface.
5. You will see one or more startable mac/osx disk images that have MAC/OS , select the one that you are using. You may only have one.
6. from the users name selction further down, selct your user. (in our example user "fred")
7. in the bottom right coder ( @ 5 o'clock') is a RESET ACLs button/box. CLICK ON THIS BOX to RESET the ACLs for the selected user's home directory. Thus may take a few minutes or in one case for a large machine with 1.8TB of home directory files, more than an hour! .. just be patient.
8. when completed, the RESET ACLs box it will be greyed out and contain the word "DONE" when it has completed (.. dreadful English btw ..)
9. Quit this RESETPASSWORD application in the menus or use +Q (command +q).
10. then QUIT the Terminal application (from menu quit or use +Q / (command +q))
11. Lastly you will see a prompt for "select startup disk" etc etc.. including "RESTART"... just "RESTART".
12. Once restarted, now log back into you mac.. the ACLS will be reset for the home directory you specified. Use the FINDER INFO (+i / command+i) and check out the "sharing and permissions' of the folder and some random .plists in the ~/library/preferences including our favourite one for thour wacom tablets: com.wacom.wacomtablet.prefs
IN your inspections after using WORKAROUND #1 and/or WORKAROUND#2, you will generally see the ownerships corrected to yourself (or user "fred') has access as "read and write", staff "read and write" and everybody "no access"
Summary: these two proceddures are mentioned in several other forums and some threads in these forums. We have used them on 4 production systems and the file permisions and the behaviours of applicatios now seemvery stable.
If you need to do this selectively and NOT on your entire home diorectory, then just check the /applications/utilities/console.app and view the "all messages" logs to see what has failed with FILE PERMISSION errors.
Oh.. before I forget - TIMEMACHINE.. the only thing that has been an artefact of doing is that TIMEMACHINE see that ALL the folders and objects (files) have BEEN CHANGED and will want to back them up. Sadly this is the case.
We ended up moving the timemachine.sparsebundles.dmg to annother file system and archived to LTO4 data tape just in case. We then DELETED those sparse bundles for time machine and made TIME MACHINE take a complete (new full backup as it will do)..
Yes this is a small hassle but we left it over night and all these are fine.
Ah! and yes BTW, it seems /applications/utility/disk utility.app "repair disk permisions does not seem to access and user home directories. (I'll stand corrected ofcourse). So it wont help your home directory. (in reference to a prior post in this thread)
Simply (and this seems to be in Lion and possible previous os/s) Disk Utility only accesses all system files and NOT /users/ .. so no home directories. SO We ended up using simple unix chmod commands with either 755 or 700 to setthe file permissions. Consult the book of knowledge (wikipedia) or MAN pages or examples ongoogle to use this command. its simple eneough.. I'm not an I.T. person either.
Phew.. btw your wacom tablet behaviour in Lion should be fine now.. (nearly forgot)
HTH... it certainly helped us.
Warwick
Hong Kong - where our new Apple Store opened today at the IFC in Central!
whoops neglected to add about disk utility n "repair disk permissions"