Projects and Events require read and write permission

This is a relatively common problem.

As it happens, the first user in a machine gets user ID 501, the next one 502, etc.

Just deleting the dummy account won't help in any way, as the files will belong to user 501 and you will still be 502. Unix uses this ID internally, not account names, to handle permissions.

It is not hard to change the files and folders' permissions, but if you have an external drive with all your media there is a much easier way.

Select the drive in the Finder and hit Command-I. At the bottom of the Get Info window you should see a checkbox for "Ignore ownership on this volume". Check it.

Just to add a note for the future: in a similar situation, you could avert the current problem by giving the dummy account the exact same short name of your regular account. Then when you try to use Migration Assistant it will ask you whether to merge the two accounts. Just accept that and you'll be done.

re: change permissions but for some reason it the FCPX files still don't work

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I had to run some special permission repair in aperture to get those files to work, and i'm thinking need to have something similar for FCPX?

What exactly did you do to change permissions?

If you have some files in your home folder that belong to the wrong user, you'll have to change the ownership of those.

This is done with the 'chown' command in the Terminal. Let me know if that is the case and if you need assistance with it.

macbuzzz wrote:

oh now i get it, i basically transferred a bunch of FCPX files from my MOVIES folder of my old computer to my EXTERNAL HD. .now i cannot open and get that message "Projects and Events require read and write permission.". .yes please do let me know what i need to do to use the CHOWN command in the terminal. thanks!!!!

In principle, you may not have to use the terminal at all. The easy solution should be to select the external drive in the Finder, press Command-I and check the box at the bottom of the Get Info window that says "Ignore ownership on this volume". If this somehow does not work, then try the terminal commands, as described below.

In following, I am assuming that you have an external drive called "MyExternal" and that your short username is "myuser". I also assume that your user account has admin privileges (which is the case if that is the first account created).

[If not, you'll get an error when using the "sudo" command below; in that (unlikely) case, report back]

Open the Terminal and type or copy and paste the following command, substituting appropriately:

sudo chown -R myuser /Volumes/MyExternal/*

You will be asked to enter your password. Do so and press enter (the password will not be shown).

It may take a few seconds or a few minutes, depending on the contents of the drive. Just let it do its thing.

This will effectively make you the owner of every folder and file in the external drive.

Now you can make every folder and file readable and writable by you by typing the following command:

chmod -R 755 /Volumes/MyExternal/*

by the way when i go to get info, there is no option to disable permissions, only the last box that has sharing and permissions with the names of user, staff and everyone - and i've set it to read and write for all, however was still unable to open the file in FCP X hence this post)

That is strange. Are you sure you had the drive itself selected? You should see something like this:

How is this Drobo connected to your mac?

Before you go about reinstalling... did you try the Terminal commands mentioned previously?

One other thing to note: it is not enough that everybody has permissions at the drive level, permissions apply to each file. And an FCP X library is in fact a bundle, i.e., a folder with lots of stuff in it. To alter permissions you have to do it recursively. To do it in such a way as to give absolute permission to everyone --- which you may want in this case, but is something to be very careful about - use 777 instead of 755.

(a little history on this: the three numbers represent the permissions for User (the owner of the file), Group (other users in the same "group"), and Other (other users. 7 means Read, Write, Execute all enabled, 5 means only Read and Execute. Why 7 and 5, you may ask? 7 in binary is written 111, while 5 is 101)

And did you do the permissions change?