Cannot set admin right to my user root account has STANDARD RIGHTS!

Question

I had this common problem, my account turned to standard.
I followed the instructions here.
I changed the root password from the install DVD, restarted.
logged in as "root", but the root user has standard rights as well!!
therefore I cannot change the rights of my user...
any suggestions?

Answer 1

Wow, it looks like you went for the deluxe bugs package.
..."now I'm the adminstrator. but this didn't change the fact, that folder I'm creating ( doesn't matter where ) have "read only" rights for the admin. system has read write....
You hadn't mentioned that before, but actually that sounds like a completely different problem, one that can be caused by using "repair permissions" on a 10.5 volume while booted from a 10.4 (or earlier) disk - this might also include having used "DiskWarrior" to repair permissions (something the manufacturer advises against). Unfortunately, Apple is in the process of revising how "repair permissions" works, and the new method in 10.5 doesn't appear to be fully implemented. As a result, it does not fix this problem, which is purely a permissions issue. If this is indeed the problem, the most straightforward way to get back to a normal system is to reinstall - an "archive and install" while preserving network and user settings should be sufficient for this particular issue. If you are comfortable with the command line, it may be possible to change permissions manually - it would be necessary to attempt a permissions "repair" or "verify" under Leopard, and to record and carefully analyze the messages to determine what needs to be fixed, and how.
The "Finder" crashes are due to another bug - the GUI crashes when there are files or folders with a group ID that doesn't correspond to a group record in "DirectoryService". There are various strategies to use as workarounds: if all of the problem files have the same group ID, it is probably fastest just to create a group record for that group. If there are a number of different groups involved, doing a batch change of group from the command line might be easier. To get an ideal of what groups are involved, the following command can be used to display the various factors regulating access to a particular file or folder - try using it to survey a selection of different items exhibiting the problem:<pre>
ls -elO /path/to/item</pre>
Copying the items to an external drive, then copying them back to a folder that does not display "(unknown)" in "Get Info" might be another strategy (but note that there have been some reports of data loss copying large amounts of data - even after the 10.5.1 update, and even copying instead of moving). Ultimately, these are just workarounds and Apple really needs to fix this sooner than later - it's getting stupid.
But actually, considering all of the different issues you are experiencing, backing up the data to an external drive (and verifying the integrity of the backup), then performing a full "erase and install" might be the one stop solution. I'm not sure about the best strategy for reimporting the data once that is done since I have never used the Apple tools and do not know how they handle ownership and permissions (what is perserved, etc.) - hopefully someone else will be able to fill in those details.
So you were bitten by the "Get Info" crash bug, a second issue caused directly by following what turned out to be bad advice in an official kb article, and had a permissions problem that couldn't be resolved using the tool that is supposed to deal with permissions problem. I'd call that a Leopard beta hat trick.