Can't delete files without password

Should exist on your Dock. The one with the house icon. But, if not there, double-click on your boot volume icon (assuming you display HDs on your Desktop), open Users, and the one with the house is your home folder. Atlerenatively, check http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8767.html Should be a similar help file in Lion—I'm currently on Snow Leopard, so can't check.

With respect to an earlier suggestion to use "Apply to enclosed items" on the Home folder, I would not do this.

The Home folder permissions and those of its standard subfolders include a hidden "everyone deny delete" ACL that does not appear in Get Info. In Terminal, you need to include the -e option when using the ls command in order to see it. For example, I just created a new Lion test account, "t2" and logged into it. In Terminal,

--------------------

Computer:~ t2$ ls -lde ~

drwxr-xr-x+ 13 t2 staff 442 Oct 24 22:44 /Users/t2

0: group:everyone deny delete

---------------------------

Because of this, using "Apply to Enclosed Items" on a Home folder can create permissions issues rather than fix them. Doing this will propagate that ACL throughout the Home folder, with undesirable results.

For example I just created an empty folder named testfolder and a new text document named testfile in the Documents folder of my new test account, t2. I then did a Get Info on the t2 Home folder and used the "Apply to enclosed items" feature. The result is that the contents of the Documents folder now look like this:

-------------------

Computer:~ t2$ ls -le ~/Documents

total 8

drwxr-xr-x@ 3 t2 staff 102 Oct 24 22:41 About Stacks.lpdf

0: group:everyone deny delete

-rw-r--r--@ 1 t2 staff 4 Oct 24 22:45 testfile.txt

0: group:everyone deny delete

drwxr-xr-x+ 2 t2 staff 68 Oct 24 22:44 testfolder

0: group:everyone deny delete

----------------------------

As can be seen, my previously "normal" test folder and test file now carry that ACL. And if I try to rename or trash those items, I now can't do it without being asked for my password!

Apple has a Leopard support article warning of this:

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

Bottom Line: Don't use "Apply to Enclosed Items" on any folder that you haven't created yourself!

I had done some experimenting with Apple's 'Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs" utility, which can be accessed as per that link in Lion, and via the Install DVD in earlier systems.

When you run ''Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs," it corrects the ownership of all the files in the Home folder, and it additionally corrects the ACLs and regular permissions of the Home folder itself and the main subfolders (Desktop, Documents, etc). But it does not change any ACLs or regular permissions on your contained user files. After all, you might have altered these things deliberately. The result is that if your files mistakenly carry an "everyone deny delete" ACL, the ACLs have to be removed manually via Terminal (or via a utility such as BatchMod). You can then follow that by running ''Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs" to tidy things up.

Apple's advice for Leopard systems in my earlier link here includes first running a sudo chmod -RN ~ command, and then running that utility.

Somebody in another post with a rather similar issue suggested the following:

a) open Finder,

b) select your HOME folder,

c) press [Command-I] (or Right-Click/Control-Click it and pick "Show Inspector" or "Get Info"),

d) be sure to unlock the tiny yellow "lock" at the very bottom-right of the Inspector window,

e) next from the bottom-left, right next to the tiny [+] and [-] butons, click on the "wheel" drop down,

f) and pick "Apply to enclosed items"

Hope this helps.

JazzBaritone wrote:

I can't delete any file without enter my password. And after I enter my password, the file is not in trash.

Delete any file *from where*? You do not normally have permissions outside your home folder.

Hey, am having the same problem. I'm doing as you said, but it's taking forever. There's the "Applying privileges to 'my name'" for 15 minds now and it's slowing my mac as ****. Tried to restart and do it again - still "applying....". Should it take this long? I really do hope it'll help.

It is important to remove any odd users that you did not create that might be messing up permissions and then you need to hit the apply to enclosed items. Using the ls -la ~ command will help to show if there is another user dominating your permissions.

I finally figured all of this out but it took a while and a combination of all of the instructions above. It finally worked.

Go under /Applications/Utilities and open the application called "Terminal", then you should get a new window with a flashing cursor; from there type exactly the following (one line) and paste the results here so we can see what you're faced with:

ls -la /Users

Okay, that got me thinking and digging...

I've recently had to create a new account and move my data and Library to this new account but then ended up needing to specify a password whenever I'd try to move or delete the old/migrated/moved files, and indeed, by using "ls -le /target/path" I was able to notice the "0: group:everyone deny delete" that was causing the problem. (Note that these are folders that I created myself.)

I was able to remove it using the following command:

sudo chmod -R -ai "group:everyone deny delete" /target/path

... and now I don't need to provide my password anymore.

Hope this helps.

Hi Jazz! The way to fix it on all of the other threads with the same question is to open the terminal, in your utilities, and type in 'sudo chown yourusernamehere.Trash' hit enter, type your password and close the app. Should be fixed! Hope this helped 😉

This totally worked for me 🙂

François J. Perreault wrote:

Somebody in another post with a rather similar issue suggested the following:

a) open Finder,

b) select your HOME folder,

c) press [Command-I] (or Right-Click/Control-Click it and pick "Show Inspector" or "Get Info"),

d) be sure to unlock the tiny yellow "lock" at the very bottom-right of the Inspector window,

e) next from the bottom-left, right next to the tiny [+] and [-] butons, click on the "wheel" drop down,

f) and pick "Apply to enclosed items"

Hope this helps.

This worked for me too! 🙂

When I upgraded to Lion I immediately had a problem with needing to enter my administrative password every time I needed to delete a file from anywhere. This included nikon view nx software where formerly I was able to click on images and delete whatever I wanted to. I followed "Apply to enclosed items" instructions and like magic, all of my problems disappeared and I can delete files and images immediately without a password as I used to be able to do. Thanks to all who suggested this, and for you for verifying it worked for you.

Open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities) and insert

ls -la ~

Hit enter and post the output of the Terminal window.