Why is "Apply to enclosed items" grayed out?

There is an archived thread on this issue but with no resolution. When I want to change permissions on the contents of a folder, very often the "Apply to enclosed items" button (in the Get Info Permissions panel) is grayed out.
Why? What's the fix? Is this a bug?
QuickSilver dual-800 G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7) X Server

You'll only be able to apply permissions to children folders using the Finder's interface (via the Get Info or Inspector window) if you're the file's POSIX owner or if otherwise your Effective Permissions return this control (e.g. the ability to perform writesecurity and chown via an applicable ACL entry).
But, generally speaking, the POSIX owner is delegated as the user who can change permissions for a filesystem object. Any administrator who is authorized root privileges (can "su to root") can change permissions for any filesystem object. Workgroup Manager provides a simple interface for doing this, but you may want to familiarize yourself with the chmod and chown commands for greater flexibility.
If you're using Mac OS X 10.4, you may find my ACL Tips to be useful: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=318161&start=0&tstart=0
--Gerrit

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Mac Pro 3.1
HD1: Systemdisk, OSX 10.7.5
HD2: Projectdisk
HD3: Studiodisk, OSX 10.6.8
Partition: Timemachinedisk
Partition: Backupdisk
HD4: Protoolsdisk, OSX 10.5.7
Partition: Lunadisk
I use Studiodisk and Protoolsdisk exclusively for audio work and they are set up just for that. I have disk images of them so I can quickly restore them if something should go wrong. I use Systemdisk for everything else. Keeping those two things separate is good for my workflow and reliability.
I had booted from Studiodisk. I wanted to give myself permission to write to that disk when booted from systemdisk. I don't remember exactly, but: I opened the "get info" on the studiodisk, changed the one that said "read only" to "read and write" and selected "apply to enclosed items". Entered my password and hit enter.
I know. This is probably THE most stupid thing you can do on a mac. And I immediately started to feel the consequences. (But at the time I thought: I'm planning to restore this disk from a disk image soon anyway so I'll just try it.)
The mac worked on the permissions for a couple of minutes. I let it finish, then I started to get error messages about system and library files that no longer could be used, and icons on the desktop started to disappear. After hitting enter on 15 to 20 of these error messages I forced a restart with the power button, held down the option key, and selected to boot from Systemdisk (Lion).
The apple and spinning wheel showed up, everything looked good until the point where the desktop would have been displayed. Instead I had only a grey screen and a (working) pointer.
Booting from Protoolsdisk (Leopard), same thing, only blue screen.
Booting from Studiodisk (SL), just apple logo and spinning wheel.
Booting from OSX install disk 10.5.4, everything works as expected, and I use Disk Utilities to restore Studiodisk from image on Lunadisk, and Protoolsdisk from image on Backupdisk. I restore Systemdisk from Time Machine backup on Timemachinedisk.
Now, when booting from Studiodisk or Protoolsdisk everything works as expected except: I cannot access any of the four disks without any OS installed. I never seen this before. The error message when I click on a disk in the finder side panel: (Translated from norwegian) The folder can't be opened because you don't have the permission to show the content.
And, if I try to boot from Systemdisk I get a kernel panic right away. I tried to restore several times. Repaired permissions. Even repaired permissions before booting after restoring.
So, Studiodisk and Protoolsdisk working, probably because the data inside the disk images was untouched, Systemdisk not working because Timemachine files was altered in the permissions change. "Enclosed items", could they perhaps include aliases of the other disks and that's why all the disks were affected?
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1. How can I get access to the four non-OS disks again?
and
2. Is there any way of repairing the ownership and permissions on the Timemachine backup before I restore the data.
My Terminal experience is limited to copy/paste basically…
I guess I see myself booting from the OSX install disk, typing commands in Terminal that sets exact ownership and permissions to all files on a disk giving me access to them, then in Disk Utilities Repairing permissions to give the system files back their right permissions.
Any help…
Thank you.
Ben.

I solved my issues.
I'm sorry I can't tell you exactly what solved the thing with the non-OS disks, because I lost the link, but it was two simple sudo commands in Terminal. Something with tilde-R
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Why is "Apply to enclosed items" grayed out?

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