Suddenly OSX 10.5.6 won't allow access...

[JeffONeil]

I have a question on permissions.

What I'm hearing in this thread is that you reset the permission from the terminal using a command line. Why would the same thing not work from the Disc Utility program that comes with the Mac OS?

Jeff

[Felix01]

Originally Posted by JeffONeil

Why would the same thing not work from the Disc Utility program that comes with the Mac OS?

Re-read Bob Smith's second post in this thread.

[BobSmith]

That only works on files/folders the system knows about; and it only works on the drive that contains the System folder. It generally doesn't do anything to user data files or third party program files. Buddy was needing to alter permissions on additional disks containing only his data.

I believe the Permissions Repair function in DiskWarrior is more robust on non System files/disks but I doubt that even it would help here (and it would be much slower to run). If you learn nothing else about the command line, learning how to use a few key commands to manipulate permissions is very useful.

I used to have a little shareware utility that put a simple GUI on common command line operations for changing permissions. If I can find it, I'll post a link.

[BobSmith]

Here's the program I mentioned above:

BatChmod

I still highly recommend learning these very basic things on the command line... learning to view and alter permissions. Its easy. But this little app will let you quickly alter something without looking up the appropriate command line code.

Bob Smith

[Buddy Thomason]

Originally Posted by BobSmith

in Terminal type: sudo chmod -R 777 /volumes/nameofdrive

Bob - Thanks! This worked for drives #2 & 4 but #3, which was my Time Machine backup drive remained locked and I got the 'operation not permitted' (I think that was the wording) message.
I assume that since TM first made a complete copy of my system and applications drive (#1) and placed it on #3, it's the presence of that system stuff that precludes the command from working??

Without restarting I opened PSCS4 (which uses drive #2 as a scratch disc) but got a message saying "Licensing for this product has stopped working" and a suggestion that I restart the computer and if that doesn't fix the licensing issue, I'm to contact Adobe support.

I'll pursue the licensing issue and report back.
Thanks again for the help!

Addendum: I downloaded the program you mentioned and applied it before doing the above. Unfortunately all it did was remove the locked symbol from #2 & 4 but I was still unable to access them. For that reason I moved on to the Terminal window and the cmd code you suggested which was, as described, much more effective.

[BobSmith]

Originally Posted by Buddy Thomason

This worked for drives #2 & 4 but #3, which was my Time Machine backup drive remained locked and I got the 'operation not permitted' (I think that was the wording) message.

This is why I don't like giving brief online answers to problems like this. There are too many possible conditions. You don't want to run the command I gave you on a volume Time Machine has been using because that likely contains a backup of your entire system... including the permissions set on all of those files. It's not as I suggested, a drive containing only user data files "where you don't care about permissions". It's a backup of all of your programs and system files as well. You most definitely DON'T want to try and change permissions on everything on that drive to RWX for everyone... and as you've found can't without more complex commands. Get someone who understands OS-X well to look at your system.

Bob Smith

[Buddy Thomason]

Weird... After restart PSCS4 still won't open (same message as before). The Adobe support site for CS4 has a technical note about this problem. I followed that directive which had to do with renaming the preferences file so that the 'old' prefs could be accessed. I assume 'old' means before I altered the permissions and/or created a new user/admin profile after the clean install of the OSX. But this did not change the situation and I still can't open PSCS4.
Additionally I discovered In Design CS4 won't open either. The message I get is 'AMT Subsystem Failure' but the error code Error: 150:30 is the same as with the PSCS4 error message.

It's getting pretty deep now and I'm thinking, "Wow, this is a lot to ask of a new Mac Pro owner who was willing to drop several grand to convert from the PC world." Of course, I've been in this deep or worse many times before with my PCs and always managed to work myself out of the hole. I hope that will happen this time too. As before, help from you guys is much appreciated.