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Since installing OS X Lion I have been required to enter my user password everytime I move a file from the desktop to a folder, from folder to folder, or from anywhere into the trash. This is a nuisance. How do I reconfigure the operating system, so that I no longer need to enter my password every time I simply wish to move a file from place to place?
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)
Sounds like you've got a permissions problem. How did you upgrade? Did you just install over your old SL system, or did you do what some are recommending and do a "clean install" by erasing the hard drive first?
I installed over my old SL system.
Okay, then the question is what happened? Open up the Terminal and paste in the following command:
ls -al ~
Here's a somewhat trimmed-down list of what that command shows on my machine:
drwxr-xr-x+ 32 thomas staff 1088 Jul 20 15:20 . drwxr-xr-x 5 root admin 170 Jul 20 15:11 .. -rw-r--r--@ 1 thomas staff 15364 Jul 20 21:42 .DS_Store drwx------ 2 thomas staff 68 Jul 24 16:06 .Trash drwxr-xr-x 11 thomas staff 374 Jun 9 10:29 Applications drwx------+ 11 thomas staff 374 Jul 24 16:06 Desktop drwx------+ 24 thomas staff 816 Jun 7 16:31 Documents drwx------+ 5 thomas staff 170 Jul 14 11:25 Downloads drwx------@ 52 thomas staff 1768 Jul 24 11:18 Library drwx------+ 9 thomas staff 306 Sep 11 2010 Movies drwx------+ 7 thomas staff 238 Feb 7 11:18 Music drwx------+ 23 thomas staff 782 Feb 4 11:33 Pictures drwxr-xr-x+ 5 thomas staff 170 May 22 2010 Public drwxr-xr-x 4 thomas staff 136 Feb 23 09:04 Shell drwxr-xr-x+ 14 thomas staff 476 May 17 19:06 Sites
What does it show for you? Where it says "thomas" above, you should see your short username instead, but otherwise it should be mostly the same.
drwxr-xr-x+ 15 noleigator staff 510 Jul 5 18:46 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin 204 Jul 24 15:29 ..
-rw-r--r--+ 1 noleigator staff 3 Jun 30 18:25 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@ 1 noleigator staff 21508 Jul 24 16:11 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 noleigator staff 102 Jul 24 16:18 .Trash
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 noleigator staff 102 Jul 5 18:46 .cups
drwxr-xr-x+ 55 noleigator staff 1870 Jul 24 00:44 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x+ 46 noleigator staff 1564 Jul 22 23:11 Documents
drwxr-xr-x+ 4 noleigator staff 136 Jul 22 23:01 Downloads
drwxr-xr-x@ 44 noleigator staff 1496 Jul 22 12:57 Library
drwxr-xr-x+ 5 noleigator staff 170 Jul 24 00:54 Movies
drwxr-xr-x+ 6 noleigator staff 204 Jul 1 13:31 Music
drwxr-xr-x+ 32 noleigator staff 1088 Jul 22 23:22 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x+ 6 noleigator staff 204 Jul 24 00:56 Public
drwxr-xr-x+ 6 noleigator staff 204 Jul 24 00:56 Sites
As you can see, mine appears to be different, particularly the numerical values preceding my home folder, "noleigator". What do you suggest?
Have you already tried launching Disk Utility and running a Repair Permissions?
I would also advise repairing permissions.
However, you haven't said what it was that you were trying to move/delete and from where.
Files that will cause your Mac to ask for your password are any considered system files, that the average n00b should not be playing with in the first place. Mostly these lie outside of your home directory.
The other ones that will prompt you, is anything downloaded from the Mac App Store. This behaviour was also present in Snow Leopard.
Repairing permissions won't fix user account permission problems. Sounds like he's having trouble with files in his user account folders, like the Desktop and .Trash folders. Of course, it can't hurt either, it's just not likely to help.
To: John Hammer1 - Yes, I have already tried repairing permissions using the disk utility, thank you.
To: SimplyMac - I am trying to move anything and everything. It doesn't matter what type of file I try to move. Any file, whether it is a word document, PDF, application, system file, or any other associated extention, I simply cannot rearrange or delete anything without being prompted for my password. I did not experience this difficulty until installing OS X Lion. As I mentioned to John Hammer1 above, I have already tried repairing permissions, and I have tried reinstalling OS X Lion. I appreciate your input though, thank you.
To: Thomas A Reed - Thank you for continuing to assist me. I have the feeling you might be able to lead me closer to a solution. Please continue.
Hmm, that's puzzling. The numbers that are different aren't what's really important. The permissions (the parts that look like "drwxr-xr-x+"), owner and group all look fine.
Well, despite that, I think it's probably worth trying the user permissions repair mentioned in the following post:
Re: Corrupt user account / user folder
However, since this was written for Leopard, I'm not sure whether it is still applicable in Lion. Since there's no boot disk, you need to reboot from the Lion recovery partition that was created on your hard drive. Reboot and hold down command and r together until you see the Apple logo, and that should do the equivalent of rebooting from the Leopard install disk.
Once there, though, I'm not sure whether the same options will exist in the same place. Let me know what you find.
Thank you, Thomas. I will give it a try.
Just to be certain all bases were covered I went ahead and ran a permissions repair again. During the verification phase the following information was displayed. This did not occur the first time I verified and repaired my permissions.
Group differs on “Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf.plist”; should be 80; group is 0.
Warning: SUID file “System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAg ent” has been modified and will not be repaired.
After 6:00 pm EST I will not be able to reply until tomorrow, but I would greatly appreciate your further assistance.
Errors like those are nothing to worry about. See permissions messages you can safely ignore.
I'll be watching this topic tomorrow, so let us know how it goes. If it comes to a point where I can't help you further, I'll at least try to find someone else who can.
Hi Noleigator. I am very much a novice when it comes to macs so please take this into consideration but I was having the same issue and I seemed to have resolved it very easily so thought I would share it in the hope that it solves your problem also.
I too updated to lion over snow leopard and was having the issue of having to put in my password every time I wanted to delete something. This lead to me think that maybe the trash folder (hidden by default in lion on my system) didn't have the right permissions. I followed instructions online to view hidden files and folders on my mac and navigated to it. After right clicking and choosing get info I noticed that I only had system (read and write access) and everyone (read access) but not "username" (read and write access) I clicked the + symbol and added my username to the list and gave myself read and write access for the .trash folder. Finally I hid the hidden files and folders again After doing this I no longer see the request to verify with my password. Not sure why it wasnt working as it did in Snow Leopard but my problem has now gone away.
Hope this helps you in some way. If I am trying to teach you how to suck eggs please ignore this but I thought what harm can it do to share my succcess.
Good luck with solving your issue.
After days of frustration with the password verification issue I decided to go ahead and perform a clean installation of OS X Lion.
Prior to, I did follow your lead and attempt to reset the permissions using the OS X Lion recovery partition. The menu item, "Reset Password", no longer exists in the utilities menu in the same form. I was unable to find an alternative way to repair permissions and ACLs except by the same method applied using the Disk Utility application previously. The additional Disk Utility permissions repair failed to combat the problem.
Even after a clean install of OS X Lion, I am still prompted to enter my password anytime I move or delete files or folders. However, thus far it is only occurring with files that were created to, saved to, downloaded to, or residing upon my desktop in the prior installation of OS X Lion that no longer exists on my Mac. I am exploring this further.
Until this permissions issue is resolved by another means, I believe your very first recommendation to perform a clean installation of OS X Lion is currently the only "easy" means of correcting this issue at this time. I thank you, all of you, for your assistance with this issue.
To hallamp: Thank you for posting your advice to this thread. In my case I found that trash permissions were appropriately set. However, I would not have known this without following your guidance. Thank you for your time.
To Thomas A Reed: After posting a moment ago I examined the permissions assigned to the files from my desktop from the previous installation of OS X Lion. There exists a second "everyone" permission that has "custom" access assigned to it. Moreover, for every file that came from that desktop the Sharing & Permissions info reads as follows:
Name Privilege
everyone Custom
Noleigator (Me) Read & Write
staff Read only
everyone Read only
I thought I might simply delete the additional "everyone" group with "Custom" privileges, but the delete ('-') button is grayed out even after unlocking the info window and selecting the name I wish to delete.
Perhaps you can suggest something I can do to attack this issue?
Finder requires password for moving or deleting files every time.
