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Continuous 'Fetching' of User's 'Home' Admin Permissions

I am trying to Export a .MOV file out of iPhoto to a folder on my Desktop using FileExport File Export with Kind = Original. However the operation fails giving the message " Exporting.... Unable to create /Users/Username/Desktop/ ".


Someone suggested checking Permisssions for my HOME folder.


Opening the Get Info for my Home folder I noticesomething odd is going on. At the bottom, the 'Admin' section constantly says it is 'Fetching...' and is greyed out. Also the last modification date was set to several weeks ago, at the end of May 2013.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11373233/MacDiscussions/Fetching%20Screen%20 Shot%202013-07-15%20at%2017.51.20.png


I wonder if this is why I get the error when saving the .MOV file to the Desktop? If so, how can I fix this?


I have tried repairing permissions, but Disk Utility didn't find anything relevant to my Home folder - just a single Java related item that needed to be repaired. And only that one item too. Apple must have tidied up the Permissions reports. I have also tried unlocking the Get Info window and changing the Admin Permissions to something else. They change of course but the "Fetching..." doesn't go away.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4), iMac 24 Mid 2007

Posted on Jul 15, 2013 2:23 PM

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12 replies

Jul 15, 2013 2:42 PM in response to El Deanio

If you want to repair your user permissions,boot to your Recovery partition (holding down the Command and R keys while booting) and open Terminal from the Utilities menu. In Terminal, type: 'resetpassword' (without the 's) and select the admin user. You are not going to reset your password. Click on the icon for your Macs hard drive at the top. From the drop down below it select the user account which is having issues. At the bottom of the window, you'll see an area labeled Restore Home Directory Permissions and ACLs. Click the reset button there. The process takes a few minutes. When complete, restart.

Repair User Permissions

Jul 15, 2013 6:46 PM in response to El Deanio

Your user account was migrated from an early version of OS X and needs to be modified slightly.

Back up all data.

Open the Users & Groups preference pane in System Preferences. If the lock icon is closed, click it and authenticate with your administrator name and password.

Right-click or control-click the entry for your account in the user list, and select Advanced Options... from the popup menu. In the sheet that opens, change the value of Group to "staff". Click OK to save your changes, then close System Preferences.

Jul 17, 2013 11:01 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you for your reply. When I authenticated to unlock that Prefs, the button to 'okay' came up in what looked like an Arabic text font. Is this a symptom?


I have a full Time Machine Back up going back as early as February 2010. I hope this wil be sufficient back-up in case anything goes awry.


Under 'Advanced options' I have User ID: and Group that both say 502.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11373233/MacDiscussions/Home%20Admin%20Permi ssions/Screen%20Shot%202013-07-17%20at%2018.51.54.png


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11373233/MacDiscussions/Home%20Admin%20Permi ssions/Screen%20Shot%202013-07-17%20at%2018.52.28.png


Change the Group from 502 to Staff?


Message was edited by: El Deanio

Jul 18, 2013 10:06 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you for your help. At first it didn't work. So I tried changing all my accounts to staff (other than the Guest account). No joy.


Then it occurred to me that I needed to capitalise the S in staff. That did the trick.


It now says 'Admin' rather than 'Fetching' in Get Info for my HDD.


However, I still cannot export the file from iPhoto. Using Get Info, the Home Folder is still showing Fetching instead of Admin, and I suspect will be the cause of the export problem. Also I note the Fetching problem still exists for my External HDD too.


Is there anything else I can try?

Jul 18, 2013 10:22 AM in response to El Deanio

The following is an exception to the rule that you should never make any changes to backup data. I've tested this procedure in OS X 10.8 only. I don't know whether it works in earlier versions of OS X. Use this procedure only for files that were backed up from your home folder, or a folder on another volume created by you, and would normally be writable by you. Do not touch backups of system or application files.

In the Finder (not in the time-travel view), navigate to the backup volume, then to the folder named "Backups.backupdb", and then to the snapshot you want to restore from. The snapshots are folders labeled with the date when they were created. Inside each of those folders is a file hierarchy like the one on the volume that was backed up. Descend through the hierarchy until you come to a folder named "Users," and inside that, a folder with your user name. The procedure will be different if you're trying to restore files on another volume.

Select the folder and open the Info dialog (command-I). Click the padlock icon in the lower right corner of the window and authenticate. In the Sharing & Permissions section, give your account Read & Write access. You may have to close the dialog and repeat this step in order for the change to show up. Then click the gear icon and select Apply to Enclosed Items from the popup menu.

Try the restore operation again, in the time-travel interface.

Jul 18, 2013 11:16 AM in response to Linc Davis

This is what I have now.


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11373233/MacDiscussions/Home%20Admin%20Permi ssions/Screen%20Shot%202013-07-18%20at%2019.05.16.png


The left is my HDD. I have just changed Admin from Read only to Read/Write. The one called MyBook is my external HDD. I haven't changed anything yet. I'm not sure I need to.


The right hand is the Home folder on my HDD of my main account. I haven't changed this either.

Jul 26, 2013 11:12 AM in response to El Deanio

Just to report that I finally got to the bottom of it. Well the iPhoto failing to import a file problem at least which started me off on this ramble.


It turned out that all I had to do was to hold down the 'Cmd' and 'Option (Alt)' keys when opening iPhoto to get a Utility menu. Of the options presented, I chose to 'Repair Permissions'. The utility found a problem and I asked it to fix it for me. After this was done the file was finally able to be imported into iPhoto.


Just restarted iPhoto (seemed a bit quicker this time or maybe I was imaging it) and the unimported picture message is now gone.


The Fetching thing. That has been cured on my HDD and Desktop, but remains on my Home Folder and External HDD icons when selected. However as this is no longer could be implicated in my iPhoto problem and doesn't seem to be causing other problems, I am taking Linc Davis' advice and leaving it well alone.


Thanks to all who tried to help me with this.


Message was edited by: El Deanio

Continuous 'Fetching' of User's 'Home' Admin Permissions

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