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TICKET ARCHIVE -> restoring permissions

rreyrich - Jan 14, 2007 - 9:37 pm

I'm using MacOS 10.4.8 on a Macmini. In setting up an user account for my grandson yesterday, I wanted to limit access to the Lacie external hard drive. I did this by choosing the disk image and then Get Info, ownership and permissions, details. After choosing my grandsons user name I selected, no access. The disk icon no longer appeared on his user window. However, today I was going to copy some files to the external hard drive in my user window and at first a popup window asked for permission. When I tried again, I got an error message. When I went to GET INFO under Ownership and permissions, details, it won't let me make any changes even after I clicked the lock icon.

So I went to Disk Utilities and did a repair disk. It repaired a few resource forks and finished. Now the disk image does not appear on my desk top which means I can't access it.

In Disk Utilities, the external drive image shows up in the in the window on the left. I can choose it and do a repair disk, but it indicates the disk is fine. I've tried shutting down the computer, disconnecting the external drive, than reconnecting before start up the computer, but still no disk image for the external drive on the desk top.
Yikes,
Ron

earthsaver - Jan 14, 2007 - 9:47 pm

Doesn't sound like you also tried to repair permissions. That would be the logical next step, no?

- Ben

rreyrich - Jan 14, 2007 - 10:11 pm

I did look into that. But in disk utilities, when I choose the external drive image, the Repair Disk Permission window is not highlighted (not accessabe) only the verify and repair disk options are highlight.

Thanks for your response.
Ron

- Jan 14, 2007 - 11:36 pm

earthsaver - Jan 15, 2007 - 12:25 am

That's true, because you can only repair permissions on a drive on which Mac OS X is installed. However, the permissions glitch is not on the external volume; it's on your own, associated with your user account(s). So, that's where you need to attempt repair.

rreyrich - Jan 15, 2007 - 12:48 am

I did a repair permissions on the system hard drive originally and tried it again. The external drive image still doesn't appear on the desktop.

Ron

earthsaver - Jan 15, 2007 - 6:45 am

You say the drive does appear in Disk Utility. What happens when you try to mount in manually there? Also, in addition to not being on the Desktop, is it also not appearing in a Finder window?, say, when you Go|Computer.

rreyrich - Jan 15, 2007 - 9:43 am

The external drive does appear in the Disk Utilities but nothing happens if I try to manual mount it. The drive does not appear in the finder window (Go Computer). The external drive is partitioned into 2 parts. In the Disk Utilities window, the drive appears as the drive icon, the 2 partitions appear as blank pages with the right corner curled over. I ran another Disk Verify, and it indicates the existence of each one and that it is in working order. When Disk Verify is examining each partition, the image switches to a drive icon and then it switches back to the blank page imaage. To further confuse things, I checked the user account I set up for my grandson and one of the partitions appears on the desktop and is accessable. Unfortunately, its the smaller partition and does contain the bulk of the stored info.

earthsaver - Jan 15, 2007 - 10:37 am

I have no further ideas at the moment. I'll reopen your question and hopefully another tech will have you figured out soon. In the meantime, if you haven't already, I encourage you to search Apple Discussions. I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has reported there on the exact same issue.

Thanks for your clarifications.

- Ben

- Jan 15, 2007 - 10:51 am

It is mystifying. Thanks for your suggestions.

ScottW - Jan 16, 2007 - 3:07 pm

Ron,

Using Terminal, to the /Volumes (cd /Volumes). Now, using the sudo command, do a "sudo ls -al". It will ask for a password and put in your account password. When you do this, do you see your external partition listed that you can not access?

If you do see it, copy the output and paste it in here so I can see it. Also, tell me the short username of your account on your Mac (if you see the drive listed).

Scott

rreyrich - Jan 16, 2007 - 3:19 pm

Hi Scott,

Thanks for responding to my distress call. I'm not very familiar with using terminal, so need a little more instruction. I have accessed terminal and this is what I have:
Last login: Tue Jan 16 15:12:56 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:~ Ron$

How do I proceed from here?

ScottW - Jan 16, 2007 - 3:22 pm

With terminal open, type w/o quotes "cd /Volumes"

Then type w/o quotes "sudo ls -al"

Scott

rreyrich - Jan 16, 2007 - 3:32 pm

Scott,

Last login: Tue Jan 16 15:29:15 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:~ Ron$ cd/Volumes
-bash: cd/Volumes: No such file or directory
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:~ Ron$ sudo Is-al

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.

Password:
It won't let me type in a password. No response when I type

Ron

ScottW - Jan 16, 2007 - 3:36 pm

You will want to do a cd (space) /Volumes

The other would be sudo (space) ls (space) -al

Scott

rreyrich - Jan 16, 2007 - 3:42 pm

Scott,

You're a patient person,thanks.
It still won't allow any typing after password.
Last login: Tue Jan 16 15:39:42 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:~ Ron$ cd /Volumes
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:/Volumes Ron$ sudo Is -al

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.

Password:

ScottW - Jan 16, 2007 - 4:01 pm

Ah, okay. I couldn't quite figure out what you mean. When you type your password, it will not provide any feedback to you that your typing, just type it in and hit return.

After you type it in successfully, it should run the command you typed in.

Scott

rreyrich - Jan 16, 2007 - 4:06 pm

Scott,

This what I get after password
Welcome to Darwin!
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:~ Ron$ cd /Volumes
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:/Volumes Ron$ sudo Is -al

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.

Password:
sudo: Is: command not found
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:/Volumes Ron$

ScottW - Jan 16, 2007 - 4:13 pm

Okay, looks like your typing an I (eye) and not a l (L).

It would be sudo ls -al

Lower case L on both of those l in that line.

rreyrich - Jan 16, 2007 - 4:30 pm

That's better. The 2 external partition are listed: LaCie Disk and OS0HD.

Last login: Tue Jan 16 15:39:42 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:~ Ron$ cd /Volumes
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:/Volumes Ron$ sudo Is -al

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.

Password:
sudo: Is: command not found
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:/Volumes Ron$ sudo ls -al
Password:
total 8
drwxrwxrwt 5 root admin 170 Jan 16 14:35 .
drwxrwxr-t 42 root admin 1530 Jan 16 09:15 ..
d---r-xr-x 30 unknown unknown 1122 Jan 14 20:17 LaCie Disk
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 Jan 16 09:15 Macintosh HD -> /
d---r-xr-x 21 Ron Ron 816 Oct 12 21:18 OS9HD
ron-eyrichs-mac-mini:/Volumes Ron$

ScottW - Jan 16, 2007 - 5:03 pm

Good Good.

This will be the fun part. On the LaCie Disk partition, do you have any system installs or anything on that? If not we can fix this pretty quickly and easily.

Since you are not familiar with the terminal, I am not going to walk you through a bunch of stuff to navigate around the terminal to check a few other things. I am, however, going to hopefully get you one step further to seeing your disk on the desktop, and once I find out what you have on that drive, I can give you the instructions on regaining access.

So, do this in your terminal:

You might just want to copy and paste that into terminal to get your formatting correct. Those are two separate lines, with a after each one.

If you don't have anything but just files (not system install you boot from) then you can go ahead and do the same commands as above, but add a recursive flag to it. That will/should free up your drive permissions and give you full access again.

Code:

sudo chown -R root:admin /Volumes/LaCie\ Disk

sudo chmod -R 755 /Volumes/LaCie\ Disk

If, BTW none of those work for you, replace the above command root:admin with Ron:Ron and try that.

rreyrich - Jan 16, 2007 - 5:37 pm

The first code series didn't do anything. The second code series prompted a listing of files from the external drive with a "operaiton not permitted" after each one. The same thing happened when I substituted Ron:Ron in the code.

Ron

rreyrich - Jan 16, 2007 - 6:02 pm

Scott,

I decided to check the user account I had setup earlier this week that started this whole mess. LOw and behold both external partition icons appear on that desktop and are both accessable. Now, how do I get them accessable on my user desktop

Ron

rreyrich - Jan 16, 2007 - 9:38 pm

Hi Scott,

I did the old restart the computer thing and now the external drive icons are back where they belong and all the files are accessable.

Thanks for your help and patience. I'm on my way to make a donation to MacOSX.com

Ron

ScottW - Jan 17, 2007 - 8:21 am

Glad we got it nailed out. Thanks for the contribution.

Scott