Drag and drop not working

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Level 1

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Drag and drop not working

Hi all

I am working on a Mac Mini running OS X 10.5.8.

I am not able to drag and drop files in Finder and copy and paste operations do not work.

I have read previous posts which state that the SECURITYSESSIONID environment variable being set can cause this problem. The output of env in Terminal on this system indicates that it is indeed set.

My question is how do I unset SECURITYSESSIONID? The posts that I have read indicate that it is set in ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist but I don't have this file on the user account on my system.

How can I remove SECURITYSESSIONID from the environment variables?

Any other thoughts and suggestions on this problem would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Feb 22, 2013 4:04 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

238,955 points

Feb 22, 2013 11:15 AM in response to evanbrown

Apparently that file doesn't exist in 10.5.8 or earlier.

Where are you trying to drag TO, or Paste?

In Finder do a Get info on that folder/location, see if it's Locked or what rights you have.

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Answer 2

evanbrown Author

Level 1

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Feb 22, 2013 11:24 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the reply.

I am not able to drag and drop files from and to anywhere in the Finder. The icon is not picked up when I click and hold on the file although it is selected (highlighted). Also Copy and Paste universally does not work in the Finder or in any running applications.

I have seen a number of different solutions to this problem on the Internet but I'm wondering if anyone here can help with some suggestions as to the probable cause.

Can you tell me where the SECURITYSESSIONID environment variable is set in 10.5.8? Is it set automatically by loginwindow.app or is there an entry perhaps in .profile or somewhere else?

Many thanks for your help.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

238,955 points

Feb 22, 2013 2:40 PM in response to evanbrown

What is that variable set to?

In 10.4.11 mine is SECURITYSESSIONID=a9f070 & no problems.

To find out if it's system wide or user specific, try this...

Open System Preferences>Accounts, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.

Does it work in the new account?

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Answer 4

evanbrown Author

Level 1

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Feb 25, 2013 8:56 AM in response to evanbrown

I have solved the problem.

It turns out that somehow my client had deleted the /tmp folder from the root of their hard disk. This caused drag-and-drop and copy and paste to stop working.

I rectified the situation by recreating the symlink tmp pointing to /private/tmp.

Everything now works as expected.

Thanks to the responder in this thread for their help.

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