How to fix permissions?

Question

How to fix permissions?

Hi,

I'm afraid I might have followed bad advice to solve a problem, which then got me into serious problems. Here's my "story":

I'm running Mac OSX 10.9.1 on an iMac (2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo). The computer is used by the whole family, so we have 6 user accounts.

Initial problem: The system requested an admin password every time I wanted to move an item to trash or away from the desktop.
After a bit of searching, I did the following:
- Chose the Macintosh HD in a finder window.
- Chose "Get info" and the Permissions-section.
- Highlighted "System" and selected Apply all enclosed folders (this text might be slightly different in English, I run my system in Norwegian language)
- This seemed to work, as I no longer need to type password for deleting/moving files. BUT NEW MAJOR PROBLEMS:
Now all other user accounts doesen't work properly any more:
- No icons are visible on desktop of the other users
- Finder windows on other user accounts closes by them selves whenever I try to do something
So first I went back to the user account in line nuber 2 above, where I had made the permission changes
- Chose the Macintosh HD in a finder window.
- Chose "Get info" and the Permissions-section.
- Highlighted "System" and selected Reset changes (or whatever the bottom choice is in English)
No luck - problem still there
Ran Disk Utility, repair permissions twice - still no luck...

So if anyone have qualified suggestions on how to get the permissions right, please let me know.

Thanks a lot!! 🙂

Eldar

(Needless to say, but anyway: unqualified guesses are really not needed, as that's what escalated the problems from just having to type password to having 5 useless user accounts...)

iMac

Posted on Dec 29, 2013 2:29 AM

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Answer 1

Phil-CB

Level 1

115 points

Dec 29, 2013 4:29 AM in response to Eldar Skjørten

Hi,

considering your "background history", repairing the permissions was not a bad idea.

However, as explained in "About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature", repairing the Permissions with Disk Utility does not affect user data.

Here is what I can think about

1. I already had issues with Disk Utility not performing as expected, while its command line counterpart never failed for me. I then suggest you to try repair permissions using Terminal

diskutil list

(will give you all the volumes in your system with their disk identifiers)

Then

diskutil repairPermissions DISK_IDENTIFIER (e.g. diskutil repairPermissions disk0s2)

2. Although your fist actions should not have changed these, you can also reset the ACL for each user.

(By the way, this Mac OS X 10.5 issue sounds like yours, and resetting ACLs is a listed option -> http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1334).

In Mavericks, however, you will have to

- restart you system on the Recovery partition (holding CMD + R during boot)

- once booted, select your language

- in the menu bar, select "Tools" -> Terminal

- in Terminal, enter "resetpassword" then hit enter

- in the Reset Password Utility, select your drive, then select the user that has issues

- do not enter a new password, just click the Reset ACL button at the buttom.

- restart your system and test that user

3. You also may find useful information and tips in this Apple document:

"Troubleshooting permissions issues in Mac OS X"

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Answer 2

Dec 29, 2013 11:40 AM in response to Phil-CB

Thanks, I got in touch with Apple support by chat. Will get back with their solution when I see that it worked...🙂

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