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    File permissions stuffed up please help!

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Underpantman, Oct 2, 2009.

  1. Underpantman

    Underpantman Notebook Virtuoso

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    I some how managed to completely screwup the file permissions ownership on my macbook (10.6). This seems to have also mirrored itself to my timemachine. So I did a clean instal of SL, and then manually moved my files from TM back across, but unfortunatley the permission for all said files are wrong.
    So I went as set using cmd+I the permission to myself as owner, as checked to apply to enclosed items, thinkin that would do the trick.
    Unfortunately while it did fix a few files, the majority still remain stuck with the "_unknown" as the owner, which is preventing me from opening and using pretty much everything on my mac.

    Does anyone know a way to force write the owner permissions to me for ALL files in my home directory?

    Thanks in advance
    a
    :)

    ps I have tried the repair permissions in disk utility several times, it does nothing
     
    Underpantman, Oct 2, 2009
    #1
  2. Underpantman

    Underpantman Notebook Virtuoso

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    managed to fix the problem.
    Enabled root access.
    Setup a new account, gave it ownership of home folder of old stuffed up account.
    Logged in to new account, COPIED across all the files, and all is now good !
    NB: moving files didn't do the trick, neither did trying to apply permissions from root to old account, or even renaming old account.
    Hopefully no one else ever has to go thru this themselves.
    a
    :)
    PS ran TM after this, and now TM is fixed too, even able to browse back in time to the old install.
     
    Underpantman, Oct 5, 2009
    #2
  3. mr__bean

    mr__bean Notebook Evangelist

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    Thanks for keeping us updated.

    Do you know what caused the permissions to mess up in the first place? it could be usefull to so that other people could avoid doing what ever it was

    Thanks.
     
    mr__bean, Oct 5, 2009
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  4. timberwolf

    timberwolf Notebook Consultant

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    timberwolf, Oct 5, 2009
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  5. Underpantman

    Underpantman Notebook Virtuoso

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    It was self inflicted stupidity, I accidentally tried to give myself permission to alter a hidden file, and it started applying it to the whole hdd, crashed halfway thru, then the computer couldn't boot up. I repaired the permissions using disk utility on my SL disk, and was able to reboot into OSX, things were buggy, but I didn't have time to do a fully restore until a week later, by this time I had run TM a few times to backup critical data since the crash, not realizing that the permissions were so f#&"up, and that this would infect the TM backups.
    So when I went to restore the mb from TM, I just copied back the problem.
    Thankfully the above trick worked and things are now super good again.
    a
    :)
     
    Underpantman, Oct 8, 2009
    #5