Disk Permissions problem- locked out of some apps

S

stephgreene

Registered
Here's the story- I inherited a 3+ year old MacBook (2GHz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM) that was working fine until I dropped it! After that, it was very slow to start up and wouldn't open some applications, so I bought a new hard drive and reinstalled the OS and now it's back on its proverbial feet. The problem is, since it was actually not my computer to begin with, when I booted up from the 10.6 SL DVD, I opted to do a full install from the disc and re-register it under my name. Then I used migration assistant to transfer all my applications and data from a Time Machine backup. Now all the disk permissions are off and I'm locked out of some applications and folders. I tried using DiskWarrior, OnyX, and the SL DVD to repair permissions, but they never actually repaired, just detected. Should I just reinstall the OS at this point and start again from scratch? Any ideas?
 
Not sure if you're proficient with using the Terminal, but if you do, and go to one of the locked folders, and type ls -l there, what username and group does it show (vs. your own username)?

Also in Terminal, you can change the owner of files and folders using the 'chown' command.

E.g. typing
sudo chown -R user1:staff .
(and entering an adminstrator password)
would cange ownership of a folder and all subfolders to user1.

Not sure if that makes any sense (depending on how good you are with shell stuff).
 
Thanks for the reply Inx. I actually manually went through all the files and changed permissions so that I have access (changed from "no access" to "read and write") so I don't know if I can find any locked out files or folders anymore. Short of doing that in Terminal, what else would you suggest?
 
stephgreene said:
I opted to do a full install from the disc and re-register it under my name. Then I used migration assistant to transfer all my applications and data from a Time Machine backup. Now all the disk permissions are off and I'm locked out of some applications and folders.
Click to expand...

So I am assuming that you created a user, then you used migration assistant and transferred your stuff and now you are trying to access the files through the user that you created before migrating and are not logged into the user that got migrated?

If this is the case log into the migrated user and blow away the user you created before the migration and everything will be fine. Any other way and you will have an absolute permissions mess on that machine.
 
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