backup

In the olden days, before Intel based Macs, it was fun to watch Intel coded viruses appearing harmlessly on the desktop, to be deleted at will. For many years, I did use an administrator account exclusively, with no encryption on the hard drive. Now, things are not so simple.

I regret to inform you that in the transition from Leopard to Snow Leopard, I delayed in upgrading from Intego X5 to X6 and was infected, with altered files in both Safari, FireFox and Java, which I require as I use it in my work. I routinely see warnings from my antivirus software from website attacks. I took to rteinstalling both Safari and Firefox frequently and routinely, if they ever showed any deviation from normal operation.

I have a very large hard drive, so the disk space is of no concern. Going back in time is not the problem; it's about how far back to go, to find a clean system, and deciding which files are safe to use.

The real issue is why the permissions appear to work differently than they did in Snow Leopard, or when I first installed Lion. The other issue is being able to let full system backups and user account backups run transparently, even from a user account, including being able to delete old backups.

If my user account is hijacked in a drive by malware attack, the damage is limited. If I am running an administrator account, and they attack with a trojan, then, they can do whatever they like with my computer.

Message was edited by: Michel Rainville

The backup failure has nothing to do with your user account.

I think this is exactly the problem:

1. Why is the user account no longer able to do its own backups, as it used to?
2. What specific permission do I need to apply in the Get Info panel to correct the problem?
3. How to I prevent the loss of backup capability on the user account? How do I fix this loss?

The destination volume is locked, mounted read-only, or in the wrong format.

1. The backups are working fine from the administrator account. They are running again from the user account, after I restarted, updated antivirus (no malware found), logged into the encryped drive, and ran backup from administrator. (Could it be that changed files on the admin account prevent the user account from running full backup?)
2. I did not change the permissions or format.
3. I am able to access and re-access the drive, which is only a few years old. (The iMac drive is less than a year old).
4. I have had to authenticate as the admin user to run automatic backups in the past.
5. The Permissions on info are locked and look the same as before, read only.

The real issue is why the permissions seem (uncertain on this, now) to work differently than they did in Snow Leopard, or when I first installed Lion. The other issue is being able to let full system backups and user account backups run transparently, even from a user account, including being able to delete old backups. (from reply above)

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to reply; it has helped clarify my understanding of the problem.

The administrator account is grayed out; logged in account is the user account. The backup was running as I did this.

My theory:

When logged in as admin, I updated virus signatures and used the browser while waiting. Some files on the admin account needed backing up, but I logged out and back in as just a user, without adequate permission to backup admin files. Still uncertain, but these settings must be OK, or the backup would not be running.

Is there a system permission problem somewhere?