permissions problems, maybe

[bobloblian]

Hello,

I encountered a mac last week with a problem I haven't been able to get to the bottom of yet.

an office with an L2TP/IPSec VPN, all machines work except this one mac. the syslog on this machine claims a permission denied when trying to access two files (one is ~/.ppprc or something similar and the other is a file in /etc/ppp/peers/). These files do not exist, I think the error is because it is trying to create them and can't.

The user account is an admin account, but I cannot use sudo with it due to an error regarding the sudoers file. a newly created admin account also cannot use sudo. No passwords I try allow me to su to root. I can find no way to alter the permissions on those directories.

the disk utility's fix permissions/volumes has no observable effect that I can see. fsck from singleuser mode reports everything as healthy. If the disk is unhealthy, I can find no evidence.

I am a linux guy, so maybe there are tools to fix this that I am missing (besides the obvious of a reinstall). Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[DeltaMac]

I think it may be relevant to know more about that Mac that doesn't connect.
Is this the only Mac in that office?
Is it a new Mac, that has not yet been connected, or hasn't been completely set up yet?
If those files that you mention do not exist, then you might want to know why they don't exist.
Has the Mac recently had a full reinstall, and has NOT ever connected to the VPN since the reinstall?

Or - is it a Mac that HAS been connecting just fine, and recently stopped connecting for no apparent reason?

You should be able to sudo with any admin user, so that's very suspicious of something deeper than just your vpn setup. That may mean that some recent software has been installed, and has corrupted some of the system files. If no such software has been installed, and this has been a recent change in behaviour - then a reinstall may be your most effective way to return to usability.

 

[bobloblian]

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and comment, it is truly appreciated.

I think it may be relevant to know more about that Mac that doesn't connect.
Is this the only Mac in that office?
Is it a new Mac, that has not yet been connected, or hasn't been completely set up yet?
If those files that you mention do not exist, then you might want to know why they don't exist.
Has the Mac recently had a full reinstall, and has NOT ever connected to the VPN since the reinstall?

Or - is it a Mac that HAS been connecting just fine, and recently stopped connecting for no apparent reason?

There are 8 macs in the office with 6 windows machines. All tested as working about 2 months ago, and this particular mac last used the VPN in production about a month ago. At least 2 other macs and 2 other windows machines can currently connect to the VPN.

You should be able to sudo with any admin user, so that's very suspicious of something deeper than just your vpn setup.

I concur. I think the vpn is a tertiary symptom of the problem. I think a primary symptom is the inability to use sudo. I highly doubt either of these is the actual problem.

That may mean that some recent software has been installed, and has corrupted some of the system files. If no such software has been installed, and this has been a recent change in behaviour - then a reinstall may be your most effective way to return to usability.

According to the end user no software and no updates have been knowingly installed in the last months. And I suspect you are right about the reinstall, but there is a lot of software to install and configurations to redo on that path so I would avoid it if I could. I get access to the box again on Wednesday, so I was hoping I might get another idea to try before then....

I should also mention that I did spend some time chasing the error messages I found down on google. I didn't find much that was useful, and the only thread that claimed the same problem was solved said it was a bad hard drive.

Thanks again for your comments...

 

[DeltaMac]

I would try a reinstall of the system first, without redoing the other "software to install and configurations to redo on that path"

If the system is 10.6.x, then just reboot to the 10.6 installer. When that finishes installing, just run Software Update until the system is back up to date.
10.7 or newer - you can just boot to the recovery system, already on the hard drive, and reinstall OS X. (and run software update to get the system back up to date.

That should maintain your other apps that are already installed (a few exceptions might be redoing your VPN setup, but that should work after a quick setup again, too.) But - most apps should not need reinstalling just because you reinstalled OS X.

I would expect that the simple reinstall will get you working again, but if that reinstall DOESN"T help at all, then the major wipe and restore/reinstall.