"'Access Denied'"

[kuran.bmr]

I am using 10.1.1, and I have one Admin account.
At launch, I enter the password as usual…

But when installing various thirdparty software I get an 'Access Denied' error.
Also, some folders become 'locked' for no apparant reason, and I am unable to unlock them…

So that gives me the idea that I am not logged In correctly…

Any advice?

 

[edX]

I have had this happen with several classic aplications and system contols on occasion. rebooting to classic and making changes there seems to work for this. On the few occassions it was an osx problem, a reboot also fixed it. Not exactly a cure but it gets you where you want to be.

 

[slur]

You may have had your file / folder permissions and ownership munged by an errant PKG installer at some point. Using the Terminal application try the following:

ls -la /

Most things here should be owned by root:wheel and root:admin. Some items will be owned by yourusername:admin or yourusername:staff or yourusername:unknown. This is probably fine.

Using the ls command again, take a look at more of your directories. Be on the lookout for files and folders whose owners are numbers. A file or folder whose owner is a number is probably messed up. (501 is the exception, as this is the owner of files in the Trash.)

Use contextual clues to figure out who the owner of a given file or folder should be. If you find an errant file or folder among a group of items owned by root:admin chances are good that this was the original owner. Compare notes with other MacOS X users to find out who owns the item on their system. To change a file/folder's owner use:

sudo chown username:group item