Why is Mountain Lion asking for my password to delete files?

You won't see that on the boot volume. You stated you were having issues with an ext HD. That's the one you should be working on, not the boot volume. If you used the Apply to enclosed items on the boot volume, you've totally screwed things up. All I can suggest is to follow the steps in http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/15/repair-user-permissions-in-mac-os-x-lion/ and if the machine boots, launch Disk Utility and repair the permissions on the boot volume.

Hi baltwo,

No, I did that for the external HD. Also, even though I took a screenshot of the boot volume, the external HD looks the same (I tried doing that to the boot volume but fortunately, there was an error!).

Thanks for clarifying. Had me worried for a minute. If the OS is finished applying to all enclosed items, launch the Terminal app, in /Applications/Utilities/, paste these commands, one at a time, into the window that pops up, substituting the ext HD's name where indicated (include the quotes), and hit the return key:

sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/"name of ext HD"

sudo chmod a+rx /Volumes/"name of ext HD"

sudo chown -R <your username w/o these brackets>:admin /Volumes/"name of ext HD"

The first time you do this, you'll get a Password: prompt. Carefully enter your admin password, since nothing shows up on the screen, and hit the return key. Terminal will remember it for five minutes, so you can run the second and third ones w/o entering the password.

Those should allow you to access the ext HD, normally, and restore the Ignore ownership option.

Hi baltwo. Thanks again for your attention.

When I tried to apply the settings to "enclosed items", I started the process, left the house, and 3 hours later it was still running. I thought it was an error and cancelled it.

Does that sound right? Should I do it again before I do the 'sudo' commands?

Thanks again!

Don't do it again. That just mucks things up. Run the commands and then try to copy & past files from the ext HD.

It's currently running. I'm getting a lot of "operation not permitted" on the terminal window though. Is that expected?

Which command? Does the ext HD have OS X files on it? Which files? Post a few of them. I might not be here when you respond, it's close to bedtime. 😉

The external HD has my TimeMachine backups. All the files so far seem to be old, 2011 Time Machine backups.

The first 2 commands took less than a second to run. The third one is producing these results.

FIles include application files from the backup, and such. I guess it's happening to all the files in the backups.

Good night and thanks again 🙂

Ah! That might explain things. You can stop the command by CONTRO_C or CONTROL-X. The sparsebundle's that's TM backups won't let you do that. I don't do TM stuff, so all I can recommend is perusing Pondini's TM FAQs.

OK. I have very few folders on the EXT HD - there's basically one folder that I want to move stuff to and from. Can't I somehow pick the folders I want in those commands, as opposed to doing the whole HD?

It's also gonna take forever - judging by the name of the files, it's only done a month of backups from August 2011 in like 30 minutes 😝

Actually, I ran the last command again, adding the folders to the last part, after the drive's name, and it seems to have worked 🙂

This should do the trick. The -R option will handle everything inside the folder.

sudo chown -R <your username w/o these brackets>:admin /Volumes/"name of ext HD"/"name of folder"

Yes, that's what I did.

Thanks baltwo, you're the best!

Now to do that on the boot volume 😝

Be very careful on the boot volume. Don't muck with any system folder, visible or hidden, or you won't be able to boot the machine.

Repairing User Permissions in OS X Lion

You’ll need to reboot to perform this, and then use the same resetpassword utility that is used to change passwords in Lion, but instead choosing a hidden option.

When you use the Disk Utility app and Repair Permissions — it doesn’t actually repair the permission settings on folders and files in your Home folder where your documents and personal applications reside.

This how you repair/reset a user's permissions and ACLs in Lion. You need to run the resetpassword utility.

1. Restart Lion holding down CMD+R.
2. This brings up the Repair Utilities screen. On top, in the Menu Bar click the Utilities item then select Terminal.
3. In the Terminal window, type resetpassword and hit the return key.
4. The Password reset utility launches, but you’re not going to reset the password. Instead, click on the icon for your Mac’s hard drive at the top. From the drop-down below it, select the user account where you are 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 a couple of minutes. When it’s done, quit the programs you’ve opened and restart your Mac. Notice that ‘Spotlight’ starts re-indexing immediately.

Genius. It seems like everything is working now.

Once again - thank you very much for your time and knowledge! 🙂