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Level 1

10 points

Repairing permissions when owner is "Fetching..."

Problem: After upgrading to Yosemite I can’t unlock locked files (which were locked before Yosemite upgrade). In Get Info window in Finder the ”Locked” tick mark is grayed out. Sharing & Permissons are as follows:

Fetching… Read & Write

_appleevents Read only

everyone Read only

When I try to change the permissions (i.e. add myself), I get error message:

”The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have the necessary permission.”

I am the owner of the file and I am also administrator. I enabled root and logged in as root and still I couldn’t unlock the file or change the permissions.

I can duplicate the file and unlock the copy. Sharing & Permissons of the copy are as follows:

Hannu (Me) Read & Write

_appleevents Read only

everyone Read only

So, now the owener is correct and I can do with the file what ever I want.

However, I can’t trash the original locked file, I get error message:

”The operation can’t be completed because the item “<file name>” is locked."

If I duplicate the original locked file and delete the copy without unlocking it, I get error message:

”Item “<file name> copy” is locked. Do you want to move it to the Trash anyway?"

I can trash to copy which is locked but not the original which is unlocked as well.

The problem appeared after I moved to Yosemite (10.10.1). I did it in the following way. I had My MacBook Pro (15”, mid 2012) internal hard drive replaced with 1 TB SSD which had Yosemite installed. The old internal HD was put in a case and from there I moved user accounts and other stuff to the internal SSD with Migration Assistant.

I have repaired disk permissions with Disk Utility to no avail. I have done Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACL's with resetpassword in terminal from Recovery HD to no avail.

The problem seems to be that for some reason OS X can’t get the owner info of the locked file (owner is ”Fetching…”) and because the owner is unknown OS X doesn’t allow anyone (even the root) to change the permissions.

Any I ideas how to solve the problem, i.e. how to correct the permissions of all locked file (in a batch)?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), null

Posted on Dec 17, 2014 2:27 PM

17 replies

Jun 20, 2015 4:07 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you!!!

sudo find ~ $TMPDIR.. -exec chflags -h nouchg,nouappnd,noschg,nosappnd {} + -exec chown -h $UID {} + -exec chmod +rw {} + -exec chmod -h -N {} + -type d -exec chmod -h +x {} + 2>&-

Worked like a charm.

JRC54

Level 1

4 points

Jul 12, 2015 5:58 AM in response to VeggieDoug

Is there something similar to this that would fix the "fetching..." problem in the Applications folder? I've got some old apps which store files in the app's own folder inside the Applications folder and I'm unable to edit them due to permissions problems. (For instance, the aging Timbuktu stores it's address book inside the Applications folder, along with a TCP/IP Zones file). The normal Repair Permissions feature of Disk Utility doesn't touch it and neither does the above mentioned Terminal command. Most applications and folders in there say "Fetching..." but some do not. The Applications folder itself does not. But it keeps me from making changes to files.

Repairing permissions when owner is "Fetching..."