Leopard questions - Permissions and "Custom Access"

I just (reluctantly) upgraded to Leopard (only because I wanted to install the iLife 09 which requires 10.5.6), and then the Permissions fun started. Install went fine and so did the updates. Then I ran Disk Warrior (new directory, repair permissions, check all files/folders).
I tried to read all the posts I could find, but none dealt with these particular messages, so I thought I'd ask just to make sure....
2. I have hundreds of "ACL found but not expected", but all of mine are on:
"System/Library/User Template/" and then there seems to be every language listed.
2. There are dozens of "permissions differ on" and they all relate to Front Row (should be -rw-r-r, they are lrw-r-r). I haven't even used Front Row....
Can I safely ignore all of those?
And, while I'm asking questions:
Is the "You have custom access" showing in any Get Info window of any application a Leopard "feature" or what does it mean? When I first checked, I found that several apps (part of OS or third party) did not have me, the admin, with "read & write" access. Some had "read only" and some "no access", but all of them showed the custom access. I went through all the apps and made them "read & write", but the custom access remains. These are apps I use quite often such as Graphic Converter.
Can I ignore the "custom access" or do I need to do something about it?

2. There are dozens of "permissions differ on" and they all relate to Front Row (should be -rw-r-r, they are lrw-r-r). I haven't even used Front Row....
Ignore per Mac OS X 10.5- Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions messages that you can safely ignore. They are innocuous and will recur each time you repair permissions.
1. I have hundreds of "ACL found but not expected", but all of mine are on:
"System/Library/User Template/" and then there seems to be every language listed.
These are the result of upgrading instead of doing a fresh install of Leopard. They are basically harmless. Such errors in your Home folder can be repaired using the Reset Password selection from the Utilities menu after booting from the Leopard installer DVD. Check the bottom option to Reset ACLs and click the button. Do not make any other selections. This only affects ACLs in the Home folder. To fix all such items means you have to perform an Archive and Install of Leopard then run the 10.5.8 Combo Updater. If you don't want to do all this then just ignore the issue.
The Custom Access is the result of the custom ACLs and simply means you've upgraded from Tiger which did not support ACLs while Leopard does.
In fact there are literally thousands of topics and replies on these two topics throughout the Leopard forums that deal specifically with these particular messages which is why Apple issued the above linked tech note.

Similar Messages

2013 SP Site Collection and Farm Admin permissions and cannot access site

I am Farm Admin and Site Collection admin on my 2013 SP server and CAN access Central Admin, but CANNOT open the site without being promted for user name and password. When I enter the user name and password they are not accepted.
This is on my production server. I have NO PROBLEMs with the staging server. The 2 are set up exactly the same.
Any suggestions?

Discussion
Farm Administrators are not automatically able to access site collections. They can however add themselves to the site collection administrators group. Additional detail:
Permissions for site collection administrators - scroll down to the
SharePoint farm administrators section (midway down) and look for the
Note.
Resolution
Add your farm administrators account to the site collection administrators group. You can do this two ways:
Go: Central administration > Application Management > Site Collections > Change site collection administrators
Go: [your site collection] > Site Settings > Users and Permissions > Site collection administrators.

Regarding customer conditions and customer access fields

Hi there!
I've created customer conditions that may apply to a particular material when creating a purchase order in
conditions folder but it has as sequence fields two new fields that I've added to KOMG via one of its includes. So, when it's time to analize which conditions may apply to calculate price, SAP doesn't find this customer fields and its value to make the proper analysis and decide if they must be included in the conditions list to calculate the final price.
What do I need to do in order to have it included in the conditions folder? Any ideas?

Hi Cristina,
I hope that I dont forget any step:
1.You need an additional field from customer, e.g. LPRIO from KNVV table. Then do an append in KOMK, and you must call the field with ZZ, so, the name of field must be ZZLPRIO.
2.In condition, fields for conditions (IMG, SD, conditions) and create a new entry with this field. Then you can create a new table for conditions with this field (V/03).
3.After this table is created you can add it to an access with V/07.
4. Finally, if you want that the system determine conditions you need that the system find this field in KOMK when SAP runs the functions of pricing. So in report MV45AFZZ.(open it wiht SSCR is it isnt open yet) in subroutine userexit_pricing_prepare_tkomk, you can write this code:
tkomk-zzlprio = vbap-lprio.
Set a break point and debug it (perhaps lprio is populated in another internal table, eg: xvbap, etc...) while you create a sales order.
I forget in my first reply. Perhaps the data is from customer tables, but it is populated in data of items in sales order, so perhaps you need do the append in KOMP, and in this case you must use the subroutine userexit_pricing_prepare_tkomp. So for field LPRIO
tkomp-zzlprio = vbap-lprio,
I hope this helps you.
Regards,
Eduardo

Security questions, cloud, and multiple access points

itunes:
i can't buy anything becasue fo the ******* security questions. thoughts?
also, can i download from itunes on my air, then, access the songs on both my mbpro and also, iphone4?
why am i having to ask? siri needs to know.

There is no way to tell your MacBook which access point to use. Since they all have the same SSID, they are seen as the same seamless network.

Dynamic Parameter List questions: Length and Custom Values

I've got a Crystal Report that I want to use Dynamic Values for.
Right now... this report is simply a "SELECT stuff FROM table" SQL query... with a parameter that the report uses to filter.
I use a "Select DISTINCT value from table" to generate a list of values. I put those values into a txt. I then import the text into a static list. This creates a parameter list that is 11 "pages" long on the parameter screen. I also have "custom" values allowed. This is to allow for "new" values and also allow not needing to browse 11 pages for one or two known values.
If I turn the parameter into a Dynamic List based on the same Select statement it stops at 5 pages, obviously cutting off half of the possible values.
Dynamic List also removes the ability to do Custom Values. The filter option wouldn't be a bad alternative BUT it don't work for pages 6+ that aren't there.
How can I remove the 5 page limit (or whatever it is) for Dynamic values?
Thanks
Chris
Edited by: WernerCD on Aug 4, 2010 4:14 PM

There is a limit of 1000 records in dynamic parameters. You can change this by adding a registry value:
registry key : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Business Objects\Suite 11.0\Crystal Reports\DatabaseOptions\LOV
and then add a key called MaxRowsetRecords and give it a value.
if you have Crystal 2008 then the above registry folder will say Suite 12.0.

Question: TLD and custom Tag Usage.

Hi, I am new to the custom tags and I am confused with one of the examples.
          The TLD has
          <tag>
          <name>item</name>
          <tagclass>com.taglib.wdjsp.mut.OutlineItemTag</tagclass>
          <bodycontent>JSP</bodycontent>
          <info>
          Delineates an item, possibly including subitems,
          within a nested outline.
          </info>
          <attribute>
          <name>text</name>
          <required>true</required>
          <rtexprvalue>true</rtexprvalue>
          </attribute>
          </tag>
          This TLD specifies that the tag has body content that is JSP and not empty.
          The author uses the tag in the JSP page in the following way..
          <mut:item text="What is JSP"/>
          <mut:item text="Evolution of dynamic content technologies">
          <mut:item text="Common Gateway Interface"/>
          </mut:item>
          I wonder why the usage "<mut:item text="What is JSP"/>" - where the
          bodycontent is empty - does not violate the TLD.
          Is the bodycontent optional even if it is specified in TLD. What if it is
          tagdependent?
          thanks - Sri


then in your code
public void setEnabled(String enabled) {
this.enabled = true;
in your endtag reset the boolean to false;
IMO, a cleaner approach would be
private boolean enabled = false;
public void setEnabled(boolean enabled) {
     this.enabled = enabled;
}The advanatge is that
<foo other_attributes enabled= "false"/> and
<foo other_attributes/> will both evaluate to false;
<foo other_attributes enabled= "true"/> will evaluate to true
<foo other_attributes enabled= "will_this_work"/> will give an exception
as the container cannot resolve it to a boolean value so that users will
be forced to use true or false (or skip the attribute) which is how it
should be.
Also note the container cannot convert runtime expressions to boolean
values. So if there's a String variable,say prompt in scope that has the
value true, then<%
String prompt = "true";
pageContext.setAttribute("prompt", prompt);
%>
<foo other_attributes enabled= "<%=prompt>"/>
will throw an error. (to do this you would have to specify rtexpr value of
this attribute to true)
For the above to work, your tag should be coded as shown below
private boolean enabled = false;
//note rtexpr value will always be Strings
//container does not provide auto conversions
public void setEnabled(String enabled) {
     this.enabled = new Boolean(enabled).booleanValue();
}cheers,
ram.

Parent control permissions and program access

I have different uses on my account so I can use parent controls and keep unwanted internet content out of my computer, however, this has created an access problem in that I can no longer use programs I usually use without having to log into the administrator account every time I want to use a program. Some programs I have been able to get working, but others refuse to be accessible even though I have marked them as available in the user access section in parental controls. Can you help?

You should not be sharing your account with someone who requires parental controls to be enabled. Create accounts for the other users to use, and keep yours for yourself. Then turn off parental controls on your account.
Also, note that if the primary intent is to limit internet access to certain types of site, you might want to try [OpenDNS|https://www.opendns.com>, which provides a filtering feature that is far superior (IMHO) to the parental controls in Mac OS X.

Permissions and keychains after mavericks

Hello all
Since upgrading to Mavericks I've had some odd issues going on involving permissions and keychains. On each of my iMacs, I've actually had to go in and change the permissions on the keychain folder to allow my user profile to access it, and on one of them I am still having an issue of having to enter some passwords from memory rather than having them auto-fill. Also, many folders' info panels list their permissions as "custom access" but don't present the padlock-and-userlist thing for editing permissions. It happened that last week I was unable to move a file from an external NAS volume because (even though I was logged in and normally have admin privileges on the volume in question) Mavs said I didn't have permission to read the file, and would not let me access the permissions panel in show-info. The file was video, and I could play it, but was not allowed to move or copy it.
Weird.
If there is some obvious measure I should take or some useful tool I should know about, please let me know
Thanks!!
Eric D

Permission Issues - Troubleshooting
You may need to rebuild permissions on your user account. To do this,boot to your Recovery partition (holding down the Command and R keys while booting) and open Terminal from the Utilities menu. In Terminal, type: ‘resetpassword’ (without the ’s), hit return, and select the admin user. You are not going to reset your password. Click on the icon for your Macs hard drive at the top. From the drop down below it select the user account which is having issues. At the bottom of the window, you'll see an area labeled Restore Home Directory Permissions and ACLs. Click the reset button there. The process takes a few minutes. When complete, restart.
Repair User Permissions

I transferred files from a NAS server to the Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server and now some of the files have Custom Access and can't be opened by some users. How do I fix this?

We're setting up our Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server, and in the process transferred files that had been stored and accessed from our Blackarmor NAS server over to the Mac. These files were all created on PC's and are Office Excel files, WordPerfect files or PDF's. When you look at the files on the Mac from the Mac and bring up Get Info for the affected file, it says that the file has Custom Access. The files that work properly don't have that configuration. I can access and open the files on some computers, but some users can't open the files from their computer even though they can see it. We're all using PC's and they get the Error: Access Denied-Contact your administrator--or something similar. I've seen on the web similar issues and it may have something to do with ACL permissions. I don't know enough about Mac OS to understand this, but what is baffling is that they can be opened from some PC's but not others, and all of the Users have the same accessibility to the files. Thanks for a solution!!

Oh, on the losing Internet, try this...
Make a New Location, Using network locations in Mac OS X ...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2712
10.7 & 10.8…
System Preferences>Network, top of window>Locations>Edit Locations, little plus icon, give it a name.
10.5.x/10.6.x/10.7.x instructions...
System Preferences>Network, click on the little gear at the bottom next to the + & - icons, (unlock lock first if locked), choose Set Service Order.
The interface that connects to the Internet should be dragged to the top of the list.
Instead of joining your Network from the list, click the WiFi icon at the top, and click join other network. Fill in everything as needed.
For 10.5/10.6, System Preferences>Network, unlock the lock if need be, highlight the Interface you use to connect to Internet, click on the advanced button, click on the DNS tab, click on the little plus icon, then add these numbers...
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
Click OK.
PS. Your English is quite good & completely understandable.

Leopard install default permissions: Custom access

Hello,
I am a very new mac user. Only bought my first iMac 1 month ago. I really liked the experience so far.
I recently upgraded to Leopard, and i had no problems at all (no blue screens, or locked users).
The problem i am going through right now, is about user permissions.
If i do 'Get Info' of my primary hard drive (the one Leopard is installed on), i get 'You have custom access'. I was expecting 'You can read & write'.
I've read a lot about these permissions. I tried a lot of things but nothing worked for me.
To be exact: i am using a leopard installation now, which has been installed from an empty hard drive (before the installation started, i erased everything. Just to make sure there is no conflict with the previous version, tiger).
I've upgraded from tiger, clean installs, and fresh installs (like the one i am using now) all to get the same situation. I really hope this is not intended.
Seen as I am a administrator, i really like to control where i want to write.
I've tried the following:
-i used Tinkertool System to change ACL's. Finally i got the '/' to show me 'read and write' but i had to change the ACL for every file manually, and at a certain moment i couldn't start my system preferences.
-i tried the 'chown -R -N'. Didn't change a thing.
-i tried the 'chown -a# 0 username' (username is babyCreative). Got a message telling me 'No ACL present'...
Now i am working on a fresh format (so the permissions are still the ones, set by default). I can actually do the work i need to do, but i don't feel very 'okay' with this permissions-situation.
PS: what really bothers me is the following: when launching leopard for the first time, and checking those permissions IMMEDIATELY, it tells me 'Read and write'. Only later on, all of a sudden, it changes into 'Custom access'. (right now it already is 'read only, yet i am copying files on it)...
Is there somebody that can help me out with this?
Any help is much appreciated.
(excuse my bad english ;))
Message was edited by: babyCreative

This might be me turning crazy... but right now... My permissions on the primary drive have changed again... Permissions are now 'Read and write'.
when i check out the owner of the drive, i see 'root' is the owner of the primary drive.
I suspected to see my username there...
Anyway: right now my permissions seem to be okay... Will evaluate this during a few days, and post the outcome here...
(i feel pretty bad now: been wasting days to this... Only now realizing the following: patience is a virtue... (so far))
thx for you reply though

Sharing and permissions, custom access, cant get user to have read and write acess

Hello everyone, i have a Netgear Stora NAS on my MAC, its located in the finder under shared, when i click on it i sign in with my user account and it gives me my folders to my stora, on one of my folder (Movies), i clicked get info and under sharing and permissions it told me i had custom access, i changed the privelages of the name,"Everyone" from no access, to read and write, when i did this, the name on tope of this (the main username) vanished. so ive been searhing on how to get my privelages back, i went to + and added new GROUP "admins" and it gave me my main username back but now with read only acess, when i try to change it to read and write it dissapears, PLEASE HELPPPPP, thank you!!!!
<Edited by Host>

I am not sure why you get that error. One thing you can do is a SMC reset then try to format it again. However that being said I'm not fan of WD external HD's primarily because we see a lot of troubles with them on Macs. Their internal HD's are fine so that narrows it down to their enclosures. If the problem persists I'd return the drive and buy one of the following:
OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro series
Lacie Quadra d2 series
G-Tech G series
SMC RESET
• Shut down the computer.
• Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
• Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
• Release the power button.
• Attach the computers power cable.
• Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
• Shut down the computer.
• Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
• Turn on the computer.
• Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

Help - Lion "custom access" permissions mess

I should start with an apology... I know there are a lot of threads that dance around this very issue, but it's so much I can't make sense of it.
So I'm asking anew...
Here's the situation: After months of persuassion, I finally talked my wife into letting me upgrade her Macbook from Snow Leopard to Lion. After installing, I then ran software update and installed everything else recommended. Reboot and everythign seemed to go fine, but then when I tried to delete a few PowerPC apps, the computer kept asking for her password.
Wanting to find out why on earth I had to retype the password with every toss of a file, I looked online and found someone suggesting I had to log her out as an admin and then log back in. Why that would work, I don't know, but I tried it. Big mistake.
When I tried to log her back in to make her an admin again, I couldn't get the computer to accept her password. So I then logged out and tried to log back in with my admin account which is set up on the same computer. That worked to get me in, but still wouldn't allow me to upgrade her to an admin in the system prefs.
So I THEN found this "resetpassword" trick using the Lion Recovery partition and terminal. I did that and was able to restore her password and while there, I also "reset to default ACLs and Permissions" or whatever it says inside this utility, with the logic that repairing permissions has always been a decent failsafe fix.
Okay... after a reboot and we're back in... and I run into a new problem with not having permission to do much of everything.
So, I open the "Get Info" on the hard drive to look at the permissions at the bottom of the info window. It says I have "read only" access. I figure this must be an error so, perhaps foolishly (or should I say probably foolishly), I grant Read & Write access across the board, so it reads like this:
System - Read & Write
Wheel - Read & Write
everyone - Read & Write
And then, don't cringe, I apply to all enclosed items.
When this is done, I rebooted to the Lion Recovery partition and ran the Disk Utility "repair permissions" there, too.
Upon reboot... I remember Keychain First Aid and run that too. It has errors to fix but says it was able to repair them too.
Right now... it all appears to be working fine, though it says I have "custom access" in the Get Info window for my HD.
However, I can't shake the nagging feeling that I've just used a flamethrower to clean up the living room.
For instance, I look now on my own Macbook and see that "wheel" and "everyone" in the Get Info window and see it's Read Only. And yet, I have no permissions problems right now at all.
(Update: I tried setting hers back to match mine in the same way (via the Get Info window, apply, disk utility, reboot, etc.) and the permissions problems all came back. So I went and made it Read & Write for everyone again. However, this just can't be right.)
Can anybody tell me (in easy terms, please) what I can do to get it back to what it should be?
I've seen notes on a program on xnation.com that "fixes ACLs"... and a few posts with Terminal commands... but I'm hesitant to borrow somebody else's solution, just in case it's not so good of a fit or if I don't understand it.
What do you think?
P.S. I promise to rate good solutions offered to up your point totals.

Something like this?
System - Read & Write
Wheel - Read Only
everyone - Read Only
Yes.
...software from xnation.com that is designed to reset those ACLs?
I've never heard of it. You already know how to reset user permissions.
if the system seems to be working fine, does that mean something is still broken/in danger of corrupting or something?
You set wide-open permissions on all files. That's insecure, and some things won't work at all, maybe not anything you use.

"You have custom access"??? (permissions issue)

Apologies if this has been covered before but I have quite a few folders that say "You have custom access" in the Sharing & Permissions section of the "Get Info" Finder window, not "You can read and write" as I would expect. Some of these really do seem to have unusual permissions, such as an "(unknown user)" entry, but others appear to have identical permissions to those for which Get Info says "You can read and write."
I suspect this is somehow related to some (but not all) of these folders originally being created in OS 10.1 (!!) & now in my Leopard file system courtesy of various Migration Assistant & Setup Assistant transfers spanning several Macs & hard drives since I played around with that ancient OS version.
Can anyone help me understand why this is so & more importantly how I can set these folder's permissions to the default, non-custom ones, which I assume will say "You can read and write" in the Get Info window?

Francine Schwieder wrote:
This whole issue is very convoluted and confusing, with new bewilderments (at least bewildering to me) turning up every day.
I agree completely! I keep hoping Apple will post some kbase articles or update Mac Help to explain more about the defaults & options, but so far the only things I have found are Mac OS X 10.5 Help: Sharing files on your network, Mac OS X 10.5 Help: Setting file-sharing options, & similar "lightweight" instructions which really don't say much more than I can discover by just poking around on my own.
For myself, I simply gave up, cloned my Leopard install to the disk I had been using for Time Machine, and did an erase and install, then let the migration assistant that pops up as the install finishes copy what it wished how it wished from the cloned system. At least things now look consistent: no more "unknown" files, no ACLs where none should be in my home folder, all new files are saved to the apparent new standard: user francine uid 501, group staff gid 20 (of course yesterday I found out even that isn't as straight-forward as one might think, I'll spare your the details).
Ironically perhaps, my Leopard install was done the same way (using Setup Assistant to copy everything possible from my Tiger clone, which is what I think you mean you used here) & it *did not* cause Spotlight to start indexing the Leopard volume or resolve any of the "unknown user" issues for me. This may have been because I messed around with permissions settings on some of my document files on the Tiger volume long ago when it had an additional standard account (since deleted), so that account's UID or GID could have been attached to a few files.
Just to muddy the waters even more, I've discovered a file (/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.accounts.plist) that contains an array of four essential properties of every account I've ever deleted since installing Tiger: the "UniqueID" (which appears to be the UID), the short & long user names, & the date deleted. This file apparently is created anew each time an account is deleted (except curiously its creation date is exactly one day later than that of the last account deletion) but it clearly includes the info from previous versions.
Annoyingly, the Sharing Only user that I added that (I think) caused Spotlight to start indexing did not have the UID (& thus GID) of the deleted account I mentioned above, so the theory that the old account had something to do with it now looks dubious at best.
The more I study this, the less it makes any sense.

Custom Access File Permissions

I"m using Snow Leopard Server 10.6.8, and we've been having some permission problems. If you go into a folder that has read-write access and open a file and make a change in the file, the system requires you to save it as a new file rather than just letting you save it and replace the existing files. I've found that the files that have this issue are setup with "Custom Access" showing in their permissions section under "Get Info". I don't know why or how it creates Custom Access but I'd like to be able to change it or make the server stop doing it. Any solutions? Thanks.

I've just upgraded to Snow Leopard (don't laugh...I know I'm a dinosaur..) and sometimes I need to over-write a file 10 or more times when I'm doing corrections. It saves as a new file and adds another '.' at the end which is extremely frustrating!
Any help on how to go back to the old 'do you want to replace this file' box would be gratefully received!
Thanks...
Take care
Marianne

"Custom Access" permissions are locking me out of my own computer!

"Custom Access" permissions are locking me out of my own computer!
I have a Mac Book Pro which I can no longer access, due, I believe, to a problem with disk and file permissions. When I attempt to open up the volume, which I am able to put in FireWire target mode and mount on the desktop of a nearby iMac G5, I get an error message saying: "The folder 'MacBook Pro' could not be opened because you do not have sufficient access privileges."
When I select the 'MacBook Pro' volume and run the Get Info command, I learn that the system, admin, and everyone else groups now have "custom access." I suppose that this newly acquired "custom access" is the reason that the volume icon now appears on the desktop with a lock at its lower left corner! Unfortunately, that lock is keeping me out, so I need help in finding the key back in!
How all this came about overnight is a mystery wrapped in a enigma similar to my getting pneumonia last summer. Coming down with both diseases would require telling long stories that would only have as their common objective the desire to be cured. I might have gotten the pneumonia at my college reunion; my laptop computer might have caught a cold last night when I ran TechTool Pro and optimized my volume prior to installing its eDrive today. Or, my laptop computer may have choked when I tried to add Disk Warrior to the TechTool Pro eDrive and inadvertently issued some command that resulted in my normal permission settings getting changed and rendering everything on the computer completely inaccessible to me. Who knows for sure? Right now, the cause doesn't matter: finding the solution does.
I used TechTool Pro to run a series of tests before (and after) I got locked out of my own computer and the volume passed all the tests for volume integrity and file integrity. TechTool also rebuilt the directory, defragged all the files, and optimized the hard drive into one, large, well-organized segment of files --that I unfortunately can no longer access!
*What I think I need now are some very explicit, error-free, Terminal (UNIX) instructions telling me how to change the permissions on an external FireWire volume called "MacBook Pro" containing Leopard Mac OS X 10.5.7 from its current custom access privileges back to my settings before my poor computer caught this disabling cold.*
I do have a SuperDuper clone of this MacBook Pro computer on an external FireWire, which I could probably use to relieve me of my pain. But, if at all possible, I would like to call upon that option only as a last resort for two reasons:
(1) I am not entirely comfortable that the clone is completely reliable at this moment. My last cloning operation last night (before this corrupted permissions problem occurred) did not complete itself, leaving the cloned volume in an unknown, or unstable, state. (2) I would like to use this problem as an opportunity to grow and learn more about the Terminal and UNIX commands.
I have read the relevant sections in David Pogue's missing manual on Mac OS X Leopard, so I am familiar (in theory) with the concepts he explained regarding ownership, file permissions, the root, Terminal, the CHMOD command, and the SUDO command. It's just that, considering the awesome power of the SuperUser Do command, I'm not all that confident yet that I could write the command(s) that could affect the state of my entire computer hard drive. So, *I'm asking for guidance from a UNIX guru to guide my hand this first time out.*
I know about the idea of safe booting up as a single user, but since I do have my laptop computer mounted on the desktop of my iMac as a Firewire volume, I would prefer to use Terminal on the iMac to fix the permissions on that mounted volume, called "MacBook Pro".
*Experts only, please*. Theories about what might have caused this problem would be nice, but what I really need is explicit command line code to cure this one. Since other people may occasionally encounter this problem of being locked out of their own computer, it would be fine with me if some knowledgeable guru wants to use this as a springboard to write a detailed tutorial on the topic along the way to the solution. Thanks.
bowlerboy_jmb

{I read that article you sent me to, Baltwo, but it does not seem appropriate, because the disk is not invisible. It's locked! I also went through all the discussions on flag changing you directed to me to look up, and I tried to apply something from there to my situation. But that's not working for me yet either. The topics there seem to be close enough to be relevant to my case, but none are exactly on the mark, and so far they deliver no cigar. Maybe I missed the one thread you had in mind from among the twenty I looked through: I can't be sure. You point it out, if you have one in mind. Anyway, in the absence of anyone providing me with specific Unix code or suggestions about my particular situation, I plunged ahead on my own, and I attempted to write some Unix code that might fix my problem. So far, I've had no success. This posting intersperses my comments along with the lines of Unix code which were displayed on my MacBook Pro during my recent attempts to tinker under the hood. My remarks are contained inside of curly brackets like { and } while the results of my Unix experimenting in Single User Mode on the laptop are presented without curly brackets. These were initially notes to myself, so I'm creating a post around my Unix dabbling to see if it triggers any feedback, corrections, and guidance for moving ahead. I'm stuck right now.}
date
Fri Jun 19 17:52:25 EDT 2009
:/ root# sudo chflags nouchg /
sudo: can't open /private/etc/sudoers: Permission denied
:/ root# sendmail: warning: valid_hostname: empty hostname
sendmail: fatal: unable to use my own hostname
:/ root# ls -l
{The screen filled up with rows of file names and their permissions, like...}
drwxrwxr-x+ 43 root admin 1462 Jun 16 04:36 Applications
:/ root# exit
{Nothing happens for quite a while, then...}
jettisoning kernel linker.
{...and then several lines of replies fill up the screen, ending in that same loop regarding no such file or directory found, in regards to mDNSResponder. I had tried the {chmod 775 > solution recommended by a user at a web site I Googled to deal with the mDNSResponder problem he had. The chmod 775 / command worked for him, he reported, but it does not succeed for me. The mDNSResponderline continues to repeat itself ad infinitum, so I must force the Mac to turn off by holding down the power button for several seconds. Upon restart in Single User mode, I observe that, as before, "Root device is mounted read-only," so this time I try to amend permissions at the root level with...}
:/ root# sudo chmod 755 /
{If I understand what I've just learned about Unix, this tells the Mac to give me permission to do anything, but to give all others permission only to read and execute. Unfortunately, the command fails. The computer again responded with the same lines that it gave me when I had issued the command regarding no user flags, namely:}
sudo: can't open /private/etc/sudoers: Permission denied
:/ root# sendmail: warning: valid_hostname: empty hostname
sendmail: fatal: unable to use my own hostname
{So, to summarize, I have a MacBook Pro which I am apparently locked out of and cannot change. The hard disk is not invisible: it will appear as an external drive when placed in Target Mode and connected via a Firewire cable to an iMac. I tried to use Terminal on that iMac to change permissions on the MacBook Pro, but permission was denied.
{So, I have tried to make changes on the MacBook Pro directly. I learned that it will neither start-up under normal circumstances nor via Safe Boot mode. It will, however, start-up under Single User mode. Based on my bleary-eyed crash course in Unix throughout all of last night and early this morning, I did gain some additional understanding about UNIX from some [free online books|http://www.scribd.com/doc/12747795/Made-Easy-Unix-for-Beginners] and articles, especially from a thorough and lucidly written article at Indiana University called [In Unix, how do I change the permissions for a file?|http://kb.iu.edu/data/data/abdb.html]
{Also, I followed the links to the Apple discussions on user flags, and I cherry picked the most appropriate solutions suggested there to see if they will apply to my situation. However, none quite fit. None have thus far succeeded. I think I now know how to formulate the syntax of Unix commands in regards to modifying permissions, and I'm willing to plow ahead and try things out. But I'm only a rank beginner in this Unix realm, so maybe I'm doing something wrong in that department.
{It just boggles my mind that someone can inadvertently be locked out of their computer without a way back in, so all I'm asking for is some trouble-shooting guidance to find the key back in. Anyone got it? Is this a problem that can be cured by writing some Unix commands to the system? Or, does the solution lie elsewhere?}
bowlerboy_jmb

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