Reset Home Folder permissions and ACLs Error

You are a genius. My iMac's hard drive died, but I was able to get the data recovered and transferred the old users to my new iMac, yet had loads of permissions issues with all of my Logic projects. Hours on the phone with Applecare yielded nothing but headaches, but this post solved my all of my permissions issues in a heartbeat. I cannot thank you enough.

Linc, I would like to try this but there is one thing I need to understand first. We have three user accounts, and need to fix all of them I think. With the commands that you provided, do you need to be logged in as the user whose account you want to operate on, or what? What is $TMPDIR? Thank you!

OK, I've made a little progress understanding this. The way the script is written, you have to do it in the account you want to fix. This is a fabulous script, but I took the liberty of making a few tweaks. One is to explicitly set group and others' permissions as they are by default. The other is to allow no access except for the user to the folders in the top level of the home folder. Also to customize the Public and Drop Box folder permissions. These changes I think bring it closer to the default permissions in a new account. I would appreciate any pointers on improving it:

{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; \

sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; \

sudo chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; \

sudo chmod -R 755 ~ $_ ; \

sudo chmod 700 Desktop Documents Downloads Dropbox Library Movies Music Pictures Sites $_ ; \

sudo chmod 777 Public ; \

sudo chmod 733 Public/Drop\ Box ; \

} 2> /dev/null

Yay to Linc! This worked beautifully:

find ~ $TMPDIR.. \( -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 -o -acl \) 2> /dev/null | wc -l

{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null

I used it to help convert a local account into a local network account.

Thanks, Linc Davis! This fixed my problem permissions on my Home folder. Bravo!

I've been trying to figure out how to fix my home folder permissions for a while. What I was missing was the 'chmod -R -N' piece to remove the ACLs.

Trying to save time, I upgraded to an SSD but wanted to use my old HDD for certain folders: Documents, Pictures, Music, Dropbox, etc. I didn't want to use it for my full home directory. I also thought to save time by just making the SSD the boot drive and using the old drive as-is and making the specific folders in the home directory links to the old folders on the HDD.

While this worked, what I didn't anticipate was the old user permissions on the drive. This ended up being a mess that I could clean up.

I tried the recovery partition method and it just hung or at least sat there for hours and never seemed to complete. I'm wondering if that was because the the links to a different hard drive than the boot drive.

Your script, though, did beautifully and permissions are all in tip top shape.

Thanks again!

Hi Linc,

I recently reinstalled Mavericks on my iMac and transferred my settings/datas from a Time Machine backup. Everything seems to run just fine, but it takes 4-5 minutes to boot. I thought it could have something to do with permissions and ACLs since I also changed my home folder name. After following step 1 you provided (terminal command) my system took the usual 15-30 seconds to reboot on the first try but back to 4-5 minutes each time afterwards.

I would deeply appreciate if you could help me solve this issue. Thanks!

Hello Linc,

I realize this is somewhat of an older post but I've been having problems with my user permissions as well. I ran the code that resolved the OP's problem 1st and got the Username$ line to pop up.

I followed it up with the initial line of code that you had asked OP to type out, the one where it checks for the "locked files" and it is showing a "114" number.

I'm not sure exactly how to procede. I've tried moving on to step 2 as well, (restarting the computer under recovery mode) and whenever I hit the RESET button for Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs the button grays out. I've left it for several hours and still the DONE button does not show up for me to click.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you!

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved, less people are likely to look at it. You can link to this one.

Hey Linc. dianeoforegon mentioned you might be of help. 🙂 This post, here -- tho old -- does seem similar to my problem. Not sure exactly how, though. I'd like to avoid haste and not break something that's not broken...

Is following this advice here a good fit for my issue?

Many thanks. 🙂

Re: messed up computer (10.9.4) after migration to SSD - permissions or java problem?

Linc,

Mucho appreciation. Adobe CC apps were taking forever to open and frequently crashing. Used the code line your posted and now everything is opening immediately after first opening, then closing and opening again.

I can't thank you enough for this posting and sharing your knowledge on resetting home folder permissions. You're a lifesaver! I was losing my mind in frustration trying to quit a program that was owning my time and efforts. Your solution completely fixed everything. I'm so grateful! Many thanks.

Link i just wanted to say that this has helped me a TON !!!

{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null

Thanks a bunch !!!!!

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