Privileges etc in 10.0.4

B

bayanne

Registered
I have been trying to install a program by dragging it into Applicatons. However I keep getting the message:

The item "blah blah blah" could not be moved because "Applications" cannot be modified.

When I went into Terminal to check permissions

ls -l' /Applications

I received this:

drwxrwxr-x 24 root admin 772 Feb 18 2001 /Applications

I also tried:

nidump group / | grep admin

wheel:*:0:mylogin,admin
admin:*:80:mylogin,admin

I also selected the /Applications folder in Finder and selected "Show Info" from the "File" menu to see whether the "Locked" checkbox is checked. It was unlocked.

In privileges (in which all options are greyed out)

Owner "system" can:

Members of group "wheel" can: Read only

Everybody else can: Read only

Can anyone point me in the right direction to get this all clarified?

Oh, and by the way I have ordered 10.1 some 6 or so weeks ago and I'm still waiting for it to arrive.

Many thanks
 
OK.....standard OS X file permission problem here. I have had a lot of fun with this recently ! NOT !

Anyhow, the problem is basically that your App folder has been assigned to the system, and has been made read only to everyone else. Not good.

Easy fix though, you'll be relieved. There is a great little utility called X-Ray, which is brilliant at modifying file permissions, etc.

Go to : http://www.brockerhoff.net/xray/

Use it, follow the instructions, and just change the owner of the folder to the head admin on your machine, and set the appropriate priviledges to the rest of the system. If your not too bothered about this like security, just set it so everyone can read and write to it. You should then be able to copy stuff in it, and modify stuff too.

One little not about X-Ray, don't put it in the apps folder when doing this. Keep it on the desktop. try it, and you'll find out why !
 
Many thanks. In fact the problem did sort itself out. It was suggested to me that sometimes Finder caches the file and directory attributes for too long and it may not have noticed that I had changed the owner and permissions. Maybe it flushed this cache after some time of me playing around...
:D

However once bitten twice ultra careful, so I will try and get hold of xray for the future

Thanks again
 
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