In the disk utility, the "verify permissions" and "repair permissions" buttons are greyed out no matter which disk is selected in the left-hand pane. Does anyone know why this is so and/or what alternative ways there are of repairing permissions?
The problem persists whether I start the computer from the recovery system (command-r) or not.
Thanks.
MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)
Does this happen for the boot volume?
Permissions repair will only work on disks with a bootable Mac OS X installed. The process reads through the 'receipts' from installers & then compares the permissions to the ones on disk. it cannot do this for non-boot disks.
You also need to select the 'volume' not the 'disk' (disks can have multiple volumes or partitions, they are indented below the disk).
I would verify/repair the disk with Disk Utilities first aid & then try again (maybe reboot too).
About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1452
Does this happen for the boot volume?
Permissions repair will only work on disks with a bootable Mac OS X installed. The process reads through the 'receipts' from installers & then compares the permissions to the ones on disk. it cannot do this for non-boot disks.
You also need to select the 'volume' not the 'disk' (disks can have multiple volumes or partitions, they are indented below the disk).
I would verify/repair the disk with Disk Utilities first aid & then try again (maybe reboot too).
About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1452
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply, Drew!
Apologies for using the wrong term, I did actually select the bootable volume, I also verified and repaired the disk, rebooted and even re-installed OS X (10.9.2), but the problem is still there: no matter which disk or volume I select, the options to verify and repair permissions remain unavailable, even after I have verified the disk using disk utility first aid. Starting the computer from the recovery system and running disk utility from there doesn't make a difference either.
Any other ideas?
I'm trying to think of reasons for it not being able to repair the disk. I guess if the disk is mounted read only due to damage it would not boot and that isn't the case here.
Have you done any 'cleanup' on the HD?
Repair permissions uses the installer package receipts for the lists of correct permissions. If that were missing it would not work (I'd expect error messages). Apple have more info at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1452
Does Disk Utility.log have any entries that may be relevant? Open /Applications/Utilities/Console find Disk Utility.log under ~/Library/Logs in the log list. Insert a marker & open Disk Utility. Read through the entries that appear for the boot disk. Post them here, but take care to trim down to just the ones for the boot disk (mine has about 100 lines before it lists other disk info).
Disk Utility also has the info panel, check that for the disk boot disk, I wonder what you have for …
| Owners Enabled : | Yes |
| Can Turn Owners Off : | Yes |
| Can Repair Permissions : | Yes |
| Can Be Verified : | Yes |
| Can Be Repaired : | Yes |
Hi again and thanks for bearing with me!
I haven't done any cleanup, however there are only a couple of files in /Library/Receipts/, all very old, so I'm guessing the receipts are kept elsewhere after OS X 10.5, since the KB article you referred me to explicitly refers to pre- 10.5 systems.
The disk utility log in console and the info in the disk utility itself both give exactly the same info, which is basically what you’ve given:
Owners Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Owners Off : Yes
Can Repair Permissions : Yes
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : Yes
Supports Journaling : Yes
Journaled : Yes
Disk Number : 0
Partition Number : 2
If I understand correctly, this would all mean that I should be able to click “verify permissions” in the disk utility, but for some mysterious reason I cannot.
However, in the KB article (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1452) I notice it says “While started from an installation disc in Mac OS X v10.5 and later, a user's home directory permissions can be reset using the "Reset Password" utility.” Does this mean that if I use the reset password utility I can reset permissions and therefore not need to use the repair permissions function of the disk utility? Or is this something completely unrelated to what I’m trying to do?
I really appreciate your help very much - the only reason I wanted to repair permissions was that it was one of the recommended solutions to a problem I’ve had with microsoft office, which thankfully has now been solved after reinstalling os x and office, but it still bugs me that the option to repair permissions seems unavailable!
Anyway, it's not the end of the world if it can't be solved, you've helped me learn a lot in the process!
George
The 'reset password' utility has changed over the years, here are my stock instructions for it on 10.9…
Backup before you begin just in case.
Boot holding cmd+R. Recovery mode should startup (assuming you have a recovery partition).
Select Terminal from the Utilities menu.
Enter the word…
resetpassword
… & hit return.
The GUI app will open, select the main boot HD.
Select your user account in the popup menu.
Then click the Reset button at the bottom right. It will "Reset Home Folder Permissions & ACL's"
Repeat for the other users.
Quit ResetPassword from the menu, then quit Terminal & reboot
That will change the permissions inside your user(s) home folders. These are not normally changed by Disk Utilities repair permissions because packages don't usually install into home folders. I'd be a little more worried if this didn't work for you since it probably just applies a few rules to set the permissions (it's not using the receipts database).
I'd also try a safe boot to see if it will repair in that mode.
Safe mode https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455 (certain things won't work in safe mode, it is normal, the OS will disable 3rd party & non-essential system extensions).
Then reboot & try again (to see if safe mode cleared caches that effect repair permissions).
I have a feeling safe mode won't make any difference 😟
Sorry this is weird. Leave the issue open & ask again in a week or so (to make it float to the top) someone must have seen this before.
Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later.
Thanks once again, Drew! Resetting home folder permissions and ACLs via the password reset utility did work.
However, even in safe boot mode the permissions buttons in disk utility remain greyed out.
I'll do what you suggested in case someone has experienced something similar. 🙂
G.
Hi Eric and thanks for your help!
Unfortunately, the problem is there for all users. I even set up a new admin user as per your suggestion, but the problem persists.
Thanks anyway - I'm learning how to troubleshoot different kinds of problems!
George
>>...no matter which disk is selected in the left-hand pane
How many startup (bootable) drives/partitions do you have to check with ?.
just one bootable partition.
I can't recreate what you find, with any combination of missing/altered /var/db/receipts or systemversion.plist or disk ownership etc. I either get DU crashing, or an obvious error message, or it works.
Since you can't check with another bootable drive, I would suggest reinstalling OS X after making a suitable backup... but I see that you already did that recently.
diskutil repairPermissions /
(including the / ) in Terminal, may get the job done regardless, but if you've no other problems, I'd be tempted to leave it.
I don't use Filevault, so couldn't check what would happen with that.
I would like to suggest this:
- mark the HD and CMD + I
- at the bottom, unlock on lower right side
- enter admin PW
- check "ignore owenership on this volume"
- make sure that all the users have read & write, "everyone also"
To verify permissions on this HD, open Terminal and type:
diskutil verifyvolume /Volumes/THENAMEOFYOURHDHERE
The external HD must load faster now but the "greyed out" Disk>Utilityphenomena is there, thanks to Apple.
Hope this help someone !
I just had this problem. This volume Macintosh HD > Macintosh HD was also greyed out. In desperation, I double clicked the greyed out volume and to my surprise the system asked for my password and I was able to unlock it. Once the volume was unlocked, I could select repair disk permission.
Permissions buttons greyed out in disk utility
