10 Second Tip: Going beyond Mac OSX “Permissions Repair”

by Chris Foley on February 8, 2010

Here’s a great (and brief) article from MacWorld’s Christopher Breen covering what to do when your permissions issues go beyond what your Mac’s built-in Disk Utility software will repair. While rare, this issue is one I’ve seen before, often when someone is moving from an older version of OSX (like 10.2 Jaguar or 10.3 Panther) to Leopard or Snow Leopard.

This issue is also likely to rear its ugly head when installing a fresh instance of OSX, and creating a new user profile with a different short name than your old one. Whoops.

[MacWorld] Reader Paul Moortgat’s Mac appears to be unhappy with a new hard drive. He writes:

I replaced the 500GB internal with a 1TB drive in my Mac Pro. I used SuperDuper to copy the disk. Now each time I create a file or a folder on the Desktop and place it on the hard drive icon or trash an item, I’m asked to enter my password. I reset the PRAM and repaired permissions to no avail. How can I get rid of that authentication dialog box?

This is indeed a permissions issue, but it can’t be treated with Disk Utility. And the reason it can’t is because Disk Utility’s Repair Permissions feature repairs permissions only for files installed by OS X, Software Update, or an Apple software installer. It won’t touch your documents, the stuff in your Home folder, or third-party applications.

That said, something definitely got mucked up when you copied your files from your old drive to the new one. What I suggest you do is select one of these files, press Command-I, and in the Sharing & Permissions area of the resulting window, see who “owns” the file. If it’s not you but some other entity, there’s your problem. If you change the permissions so that you own the file, you won’t see the warning.

Continue reading this article HERE at MacWorld.com.

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Tagged as: 10-Second Tip, Mac Slowdown, Spinning Beachball, Workflow, Your Digital-Life

http://tdhurst.com/ Tyler Hurst

I will never understand why people store files at the root level of the hard drive. Doesn’t it make a ton more sense to use the built-in system, or by default the Documents folder?
http://tdhurst.com Tyler Hurst

I will never understand why people store files at the root level of the hard drive. Doesn’t it make a ton more sense to use the built-in system, or by default the Documents folder?
http://foleypod.com/ Chris Foley

Yeah, It certainly does. With the exception of Applications, I store everything to the right of my home directory, and have every since OS9, though I do so because I’ve been trained:

You’ll remember that before we had Time Machine, we used to have to use other, more difficult to use backup systems, such as Retrospect (yuck) or Apple’s Backup (double yuck) or God-Forbid, LaCie’s Silverkeeper (actually, that one wasn’t so bad.)
Anyway, because these utilities weren’t very good at creating bootable backups, and because it’s a bit overkill to use a tool like SuperDuper to back up your files every week, I learned to only backup my home directory. Therefore, I forced myself into the habit of storing no essential files behind the home directory, and I’ve been instructing clients in this vein ever since.

With Time Machine, it really doesn’t matter anymore, since everything is captured every hour on the hour, but best practices die hard.

Thanks for commenting!
~ Chris
@foleypod
http://foleypod.com Chris Foley

Yeah, It certainly does. With the exception of Applications, I store everything to the right of my home directory, and have every since OS9, though I do so because I’ve been trained:

You’ll remember that before we had Time Machine, we used to have to use other, more difficult to use backup systems, such as Retrospect (yuck) or Apple’s Backup (double yuck) or God-Forbid, LaCie’s Silverkeeper (actually, that one wasn’t so bad.)
Anyway, because these utilities weren’t very good at creating bootable backups, and because it’s a bit overkill to use a tool like SuperDuper to back up your files every week, I learned to only backup my home directory. Therefore, I forced myself into the habit of storing no essential files behind the home directory, and I’ve been instructing clients in this vein ever since.

With Time Machine, it really doesn’t matter anymore, since everything is captured every hour on the hour, but best practices die hard.

Thanks for commenting!
~ Chris
@foleypod
http://tdhurst.com/ Tyler Hurst

I agree it’s easier now, but just like in math class, it’s best that people learn some of the basic fundamentals before we start letting them free to use whatever they want.

What I’m too often seeing is clients messing with the system and library folders, because they think any folder they can access is up for grabs.

Keeping them in the home folder solves this problem for the most part.

I did NOT know about the limitations of Disk Utility, however. Thanks for pointing that out!
http://tdhurst.com Tyler Hurst

I agree it’s easier now, but just like in math class, it’s best that people learn some of the basic fundamentals before we start letting them free to use whatever they want.

What I’m too often seeing is clients messing with the system and library folders, because they think any folder they can access is up for grabs.

Keeping them in the home folder solves this problem for the most part.

I did NOT know about the limitations of Disk Utility, however. Thanks for pointing that out!