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reset home folder permissions

How do I reset Home folder permissions in Lion? In Snow Leopard, this was achieved by booting with the install DVD and accessing the Password Reset Utility. Alas, this is gone in Lion. Making myself the owner on folders and propogating permissions doesn't work. I'm still asked to input my password when deleting directories that I manually migrated from Snow Leopard.

Posted on Jul 25, 2011 5:48 AM

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3 replies

Sep 25, 2011 4:06 AM in response to John Catalano

1. Restart Lion, and before you hear the chime, hold down the Command and R keys.

2. You’ll be at the Repair Utilities screen. Click the Utilities item in the Menu Bar, then click Terminal.

3. In the Terminal window, type resetpassword and hit Return.

4. The password reset utility window launches, but you’re not going to reset the password. Instead, click on icon for your Mac’s hard drive at the top. From the dropdown below it, select the user account where you’re having issues.

5. At the bottom of the window, you’ll see an area labeled Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs. Click the Reset button there.

The reset process takes just a couple of minutes. When it’s done, exit the programs you’ve opened and restart your Mac.

Feb 7, 2012 7:43 AM in response to lilfecker

I started this process on my 2010 MacBook Pro that I recently upgraded to Lion which has been running terribly slow in hope that it would address the issue. According to the above post it should take a couple of minutes, but it has been running for over 30 minutes.


How long should i let it run or is the process hung ? There is no metric or status showing expected process time so I have no way of knowing? Has anyone else run into this issue with this "utility"?

Thanks! I really need to get my MacBook back running so I can get work done.

reset home folder permissions

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