Strange User Permissions/Group OS X Lion

SOB 😟

careful with that axe, eugene... 😮

after upgrading from 10.6 to 10.7 I begain noticing some apparent delays in many processes. upon running disk utility there were a bunch of the ACL errors thrown and permissions overall were whacked. the suid error that's now been around since 10.5 and longer said it wasn't repairable. following the advice of apple since 10.5 or before I ignored the suid and acl errors and repaired permissions. and then again... and then again... and then again.

the next morning i sat down to the machine, booted up, and then discovered my harddrive wouldn't allow me to open it. after more ignoring of these known errors as apple has advised on multiple threads, i attempted to manually modify the permissions on my drive simply so i could get access to it.

the screen went blank and started some horribly long process that eventually resulted in a reboot that never ever completed. hours later after multiple recovery attempts i decided to do a complete wipe of my drive and do a clean install of 10.7 only.

it was wonderful for about 36 hours. now wanting to run a time capsule to get a backup the disk utility shows all the errors again and there are some very strange file and folder issues showing up. i fear something awful is coming. we've been told to ignore them... i wouldn't if i were you.

I just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion (10.7.2), and promptly had these exact same problems with my account, which was first created under Tiger.

Using the suggestions here and elsewhere, I have solved it in a way that seems to be working so far.

• First, and thanks to Deep Sky Diver, perform the Reset of your home folder permissions described at http://www.fixkb.com/2011/08/reset-home-folder-permissions.html (be sure to use the tab that says "No Disc - Lion". Print this out so you can refer to it while you work. This is a good opportunity to learn about the new Lion Recovery feature, which is long overdue!) Note that you're using Apple's own tools to do this, and it's a standard procedure. On restart, this eliminated the "fetching" status for the permissions of all the files I had in my home folder on my internal drive. It also resolved the extremely alarming invisibility/inaccessability of all the files on my external drive.
• However, all the files on my external drive were still showing "Fetching..." as the group. This makes good sense, as Lion Recovery reset my *home folder's* permissions, and not those of other drives. I used the free BatChmod application to simply set the permissions of all files on the drive to the same as what was in my home folder: my own user as the owner, and "staff" as the group. Restart so the changes can take effect, and so far, so good.

Yes this works. Fetching is gone and now I have sraff as it should be.

Be prepared that at the reboot spotlight will reindex all the drive.

Regading the backup, since I have other backups I decided to format and restart with a new TM drive.

Now permissions are ok also there.

I hope to be safe for the future now.

Its not only accounts created under Tiger. My MacBook suffers the same problem yet has never run Tiger. Purchased with Leopard, upgraded to SNow Leopard and nt to Lion yet still having the problems on some files.

However, some observations from my system:

My user is a member of the staff group (I've not needed to fix this, just checked and it was already a member)

When it happens it seems to apply to all files in a directory but not to folders in the same directory.

When it happens, it starts in a directory and affects all files in that directory and files in all sub-directories (but not directories themselves).

The only place I have noticed it happening is on files where I have changed the permissions (which is maybe why I am seeing the "all files" as the main problem is a load of files and directories I copied from a CD. they were all write protected so I changed permissions on them all (recirsively) - so they are all affected.

Either there are two causes (Tiger users and whatever I did) or the issues/causes are confused (or related).

I am also having massive problems with Time Machine taking hours and trying to burn out my CPU fan so am wondering if the two might be related (plus a load of other Lion issues to the point where if anybody can tell me how to downgrade to Snow Leopard I would do it now - but too much done on computer since them, though trying to sort problems is taking most of my time these days).

dilettante wrote:

I just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion (10.7.2), and promptly had these exact same problems with my account, which was first created under Tiger.

Using the suggestions here and elsewhere, I have solved it in a way that seems to be working so far.

• First, and thanks to Deep Sky Diver, perform the Reset of your home folder permissions described at http://www.fixkb.com/2011/08/reset-home-folder-permissions.html (be sure to use the tab that says "No Disc - Lion". Print this out so you can refer to it while you work. This is a good opportunity to learn about the new Lion Recovery feature, which is long overdue!) Note that you're using Apple's own tools to do this, and it's a standard procedure. On restart, this eliminated the "fetching" status for the permissions of all the files I had in my home folder on my internal drive. It also resolved the extremely alarming invisibility/inaccessability of all the files on my external drive.
• However, all the files on my external drive were still showing "Fetching..." as the group. This makes good sense, as Lion Recovery reset my *home folder's* permissions, and not those of other drives. I used the free BatChmod application to simply set the permissions of all files on the drive to the same as what was in my home folder: my own user as the owner, and "staff" as the group. Restart so the changes can take effect, and so far, so good.

Worked for me as well (though I have never run Lion so earliest accounts were created under Leopard). Maybe different from those starting from Tiger, maybe same issue but the above solved my issues - and now have a clean time maching backup - though still seem to have the time machine performance issues).

I don't know too much about this sort of thing, but it seems to me that the 'issue' lies in the operating system handling whicever 'group' you're in. In Lion, it appears users are under "staff", and earlier, users were under a group that was named after their user.

The problem with restoring folders and certain files seems that some files back under Tiger were created under the group "Wheel", so if you try to restore a folder containgin a file with that group permission, it would fail, and just not restore anything.

Now, I have a question - it appears to me, that even after upgrading to Lion (from a computer that has a user since Tiger), my user group still appears to be my username, which lion fails to 'fetch' when using cmd+i (get info). This in itself is not a problem, I don't think. Everything seesm to be working fine.

I was curios that if I performa Lion Reset Home Folder Permissions as described above, will that reset my user's group to 'staff'? Or will it reset my files in my home folder to my current group (ie my username)?

I would liek to fix the user group files in my home folder that are "wheel" to what they should be, but if everything is simply going to be changed to staff, I probably want to start a new TM backup afterwards.

Ok, so a bit more playing around, I think I know Deep Sky Diver's issue regarding restoring folders.

It appears he was on the right track.

The group "wheel" is a root thing, I believe. Thus, if you try to restore a FOLDER containing a file belonging to the group "wheel", it will fail to restore THAT file, and quit the restore process (anything restoring prior will restore, anything after does not), as the restore process appears to restore with privleges according to teh current user (makes sense).

If you restore a SINGLE file that belongs to "wheel", Mac OS X Lion will actually change the group to your current group, overwriting the 'wheel' group. This further confirms that 'wheel' files don't belong in the home folder (if you try from outside the home folder, it will prompt for admin password, assuming it will try as superuser/root).

This all seems to explain why restoring files with 'wheel' group is not successful. It appears that Lion Time Machine restore processes have changed.

So there are fixes to this. I assume a fix to ALL groups to the suppsoed default of 'staff' will fix this. However, I'm reticnet to currently do it, as my Time Machine backup will probably try to initiate a complete rewrite if I change ALL file permissions in my Home folder (currently, files in my home folder mostly belong to a group named after my username, as occured in TIger - I migrated all the way since Panther, 10.3).

So I'm curious as to what the RESET HOME FOLDER PERMISSIONS does - does it reset all files in my home folder to belong to 'staff'? Or just reset those that aren't my current group of 'username'?

Alternatively, I guess I could find every single file that belongs to 'wheel' ( terminal: find ~/ -group wheel) (as it turns out, most of the files are some really old .webarchive, .ps, and .pdf files from when I printed to or saved a webpage back under tiger or something, obviously operating the process under 'wheel'), and use the command "chgrp". I tested this on ine file and it worked.

Of course, this doesn't solve the "fetching" appearing in info, but I think that's realtively minor - I was mostly concerned with whther a TIme Machine restore would actually restore all my files during a full restore, including the 'wheel' files, or if that would stop the process. I imagine a full restore would actually operate under 'wheel', so there would be no problem.

Had the same issue. In another context (the mysterious "guest user" appearing on login) I set up an additional user, and immediately deleted that user again. Since then the "Fetching..." issue no longer affects my home folder. Odd.

My Lion account was created brand new out-of-the box. I’ve configured it to go on our company’s enterpise network (Active Directory, Managed, Mobile). The Snow Leopard users that I checked (two so far) do not have the “Fetching...” issue.

My first clue that something might be amiss with my Home account was the random inability to write files (TextEdit, DragThing Docks, etc.). When doing a Get Info and seeing the “Fetching...” permission, I knew something was up.

What makes my situation a little bit different is that my Lion Home account was made new from the start. I did not migrate previous data from an earlier version of OS X.

Also, since my account is a Managed, Mobile account using my company’s Active Directory service, I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I don’t sync my data to my “H:” drive, (space provided on server for user accounts).

Not sure if I should try the above fixes unless my ability to create/update files becomes worse. I open to suggestions. Thanks.

Hmm...Not sure if this has been suggested before, but here's how I seem to have resolved the issue while on the phone with Apple (my call to them was about why I couldn't go back to Snow Leopard because this issue was making me unhappy with Lion).

At Apple's guidance, getting the "Get Info" results for the Applications folder and my home account in "Users" (and, in my case, one more specific directory which I have used as a second 'applications' folder in which to group some specific applications), I did the following from the "Get Info" results, since my main (home) account did not appear at all:

1. Click on the lock to enable changes to be made.
2. Click once on the 'fetching' user name so it is selected, then click on the "-" button at the bottom to delete it.
3. Click "+" to add a new user. From the window which appears, select the appropriate user.
4. Under the "Privilege" column, click once on the row with the new username. Change privileges to "Read & Write".
5. Click on the wheel icon at the bottom of the "Get Info" window. From the available options, select "Apply to enclosed items..."
6. Close the "Get info" window.

Certainly this addressed issues I was having with one application (and items within its folder), so I expanded it to cover several other directories. I made sure I did not make global changes to the "MacHD" (main) directory), or "System", "Library" or "Users" directories, because that can have nasty effects. I did go in and make global changes ("apply to enclosed items...") on non-system directories.

So far, everything seems to be functioning normally.

The key is to not make global changes to key system folders, but as far as application folders, it appears to be safe.

Good luck, and I hope it works for you. :-)

I made sure I did not make global changes to the "MacHD" (main) directory), or "System", "Library" or "Users" directories, because that can have nasty effects.

Did you use "Apply to enclosed items" on your Home folder itself, or just on an Applications folder that was within your Home folder. Using it on a Home folder is not a good idea.

If you did do this, what happens If you pick an item that had been present in your Home folder before you did it, and now try to move that item to the Trash? Can you Trash the item without being asked for your password? Can you rename the item?

If you did do this, what happens If you pick an item that had been present in your Home folder before you did it, and now try to move that item to the Trash? Can you Trash the item without being asked for your password? Can you rename the item?

Ah, yes. So much for the Applecare senior tech's suggestion.😠 Looks like I may have been led slightly astray, and those items (I've tested some items on the desktop since of course the desktop folder is within the User home folder) and sure enough they can't be renamed without a password. 😟 Fortunately it appears that the contents of my main drive weren't impacted because I did those individually. I just Emailed him to let him know and ask if there was a solution to my new problem.

You might refer him to this Apple support article: 😉

Mac OS X 10.5: Renaming or saving after using "Apply to enclosed items" on a Home folder

The problem arises because the Home folder permissions and those of its standard subfolders include a hidden "everyone deny delete" ACL that does not appear in Get Info. Using "Apply to Enclosed Items" will propagate that restrictive ACL throughout the Home folder contents.

My own suggestion at this point would be first to run the same Terminal command that was suggested in the first 3 steps of the above Leopard support article.

sudo chmod -RN ~

With respect to steps 4-11 of that support article, there is no install DVD for Lion. Instead I would use the corresponding procedure that is on the No Disc-Lion tab of the following article:

Reset home folder permissions

Out of curiosity, would resetting Home Folder permissions cause an entirely new backup in Time Machine? I have a huge home folder and wouldn't want that to happen in a hurry. Not that I'll try this just yet. I might wait to see if the next release of 10.7 is a wider bug fix.