Disk Utility Error -60008

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

Under the recent Lion upgrade, my iMac's permissions pane now lists:

system (R&W)

wheel (Read Only)

everyone (Read only)

The external FW HD I am trying to write to lists:

admin (read only)

MyName (R&W)

staff (R&W)

everyone (read only)

Also, the "Ignore owndershop on this volume" box is checked.

I added MyName to my iMac's permissions list by hitting the "+" button in the left lower corner. Under "Users and Groups", where both "Administrators" and "MyName" are listed, I highlight "MyName" and click "Select", then changed "MyName" to R&W and finally used the little gear icon in the lower pane to apply to all enclosed items.

Unfortunately, even after all this, the result is identical. Any further suggestions from anyone would be greatly appreciated!

Great idea; thank you!

Two questions:

When you say "then highlight your drive" do you mean the external FW drive that I am trying to place the .dmg on?

What folder are you referring to when you say "move this folder to the Desktop for now"? Is it: { /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ByHost / } If so, do I move it back to where it came from when finished, or just trash it if this process works?

Much appreciated.

Again, thanks for your help!

Here’s what I did:

1) In my account, I set up another administrator account

2) Logged out of my personal administrator account, then logged into the new SysAd account

Here’s what I found in the new administrator account:

Neither my internal hard drive, nor the two external hard drives showed up on the desktop.

I clicked on “Documents” in the dock to get a window. Here, again the internal HD did not show up.

1) The two external FW drives did show up this way

2) When I click on the various folders in the sidebar (Desktop, Downloads, Movie, Music, Pictures) I get a “the x folder cannot be opened cuz you do not have permissions” type error message.

3) Only “Applications” folder opened in the usual way from this approach.

When I go into Disk Utility in the SysAd account and try to create the .dmg in the usual fashion, I again get the -60008 error.

Thus, you seem to be spot on that there is something wrong with the permissions on my hard drive. But, how did this happen with the upgrade to Lion? More importantly, how do I fix it and get my permissions back to a normal state?

Much appreciated!

More info in this sleuthing problem:

Setting up another System Administrator account on my home iMac yielded the same results; thus, I'm thinking that it was the upgrade to Lion that did something systemic to Disk Utility and/or permissions, since the results are identical on two totally different machines.

I then followed your advice about Safe Booting, removing /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ByHost /, and repairing permissions. ByHost folder went from 160 items in the old (now on the Desktop) version, to 20 items in the new version in the Library. I rebooted and unfortunately had the exact same problem!!!

What next? This is so frustrating. Thanks again!

It gets even more interesting:

Disk Utility successfully creates disk images on all 3 of my computers (internally and on external FW drives) if I do not use encryption; but, if I use 128 or 256 bit AES encryption, the error is reproducible on all 3 of my computers.

The -60008 error occurs independent of whether the image format is "read/write disk image", "sparse disk image", or "sparse bundle disk image"; the one common factor is that all of these function as promised if there is no encryption, but that turning on encryption reliably produces this error on all 3 machines.

Thus, I'm wondering if all this permission stuff (which I freely admit I understand not at all) is a bit of a red herring.

So, bottom-line, how does one use Lion to successfully create a 256 bit AES encrypted disk image?

A fascinating random discovery: whether in Safe Boot mode or normal, the AES enryption process works for short passwords, but not for longer ones. Somewhere around 13 or 14 character long PWs (somewhat irreproducible), the process quits working and instead gives the -60008 error message.

This sounds like a deep level programming bug that can only be fixed by Apple. In the mean-time, does anyone have ideas/recommendations for OEM encryption programs to create encrypted disk images? Years ago I used PGP, but their customer support for Macs was less than optimal. I hate to give up Apple's AES encryption program since it was so elegant and worked on any Mac, but given these difficulties would appreciate thots on possible replacements.

Much appreciated.

Please see the excellent advice proffered by a Mac Guru here for a solution to this problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3980264?answerId=18493115022#18493115022

Basically, it's a bug, and Linc Davis provided a terminall workaround.