Hi Sarah and Jim,
I found a discussion in the Apple Support forums that talks about this
permissions problem under Lion, and steps that people have taken to solve it.
The described symptoms sound familiar -- for example, preferences not being
saved. The solution involves using Terminal to type in a command that sets
permissions for your home folder so that you have read and write access, but so
that everyone else has only read access. Since I'm newly using Lion, and not
having this permissions problem, I'm not able to try this out.
Here are the instructions. (I'm pasting in the version "for less experienced
users"):
<begin quote>
For less experienced terminal users, these are more explicit instructions to
follow cgDesign's method from page 1:
Step 0:
Be sure to complete ALL steps
Step 1:
Open the application Terminal.app (Utilities folder inside of your
applications folder)
Step 2:
when the prompt comes up, on the line that ends in "$", paste in (exactly)
chmod -R -N ~
and hit the enter key on your keyboard, and wait a couple of minutes for
this to complete. You may see several messages regarding invalid arguments -
these are OK.
Step 3:
When the prompt ending in "$" returns, paste in (exactly)
chmod +a "everyone deny delete" ~/ ~/Desktop ~/Documents
~/Downloads ~/Library ~/Movies ~/Music ~/Pictures ~/Public
When the prompt ending in "$" returns, you have completed all steps. You can
quit Terminal.app.
<end quote>
There is some debate about whether using the first command is necessary. The
second command with the "everyone deny delete" argument is what fixes the
permissions issue. Both use the "chmod" command -- spelled "c h m o d" --
which changes the file mode access bits (permissions), and/or modifies access
control lists associated with these files. Unix is case sensitive, and
inserting spaces between keys to commands -- like the hyphen and capital letter
R, or the hyphen and capital letter N in the first command -- alters the
meaning of the command. Instead of applying the command recursively to
subfolders, which is what the "-R" key indicates, typing the "R" with a space
before it would turn it into an argument -- a (non-existent) folder with the
name "R" in the present directory. The tilde symbol is preceded by a space,
because this is the argument to the command, and is the shorthand way of
indicating the current user's home directory.
All Terminal commands are entered by pressing the "return" key after you've
typed the line.
So, Sarah, open a Terminal session in Finder:
1. Command-Shift-U to go to "Utilities", press "t" to go to Terminal, and
Command-Down arrow to launch Terminal
2. In the Terminal window, type or paste in:
chmod -R -N ~
then press return. (That's the chmod command, followed by a space, followed by
hyphen capital R, followed by a space, followed by hyphen capital N, followed
by a space, followed by the tilde symbol.)
3. Wait a few minutes for this to complete, and ignore error messages.
4. Type or paste in:
chmod +a "everyone deny delete" ~/ ~/Desktop ~/Documents ~/Downloads ~/Library
~/Movies ~/Music ~/Pictures ~/Public
then press return. (That's the chmod command, followed by a space, filed by a
plus sign and small letter a, followed by the three words in quotes, "everyone
deny delete", followed by a space, followed by a list of folders in your home
directory, all separated by spaces. These arguments all begin with a tilde
symbol followed by a slash, which indicates your top level home directory. So
in addition to tilde slash by itself as the first argument, you'll be typing
tilde slash before all the default folders that should appear in your home
directory: Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Library, Movies, Music, Pictures, and
Public. The names of all these folders begin with a capital letter. The
command is a single line.
5.Wait a while for the last command to be executed, then quite your Terminal
app with Command-q.
Sarah, this should fix your not being able to write to the Documents folder on
your home directory. For some reason, your permissions access was being
superseded, so that either the system or some other application could change
the permissions to those folders, locking you out. Either the system access
control lists or default permissions were not set correctly, so repairing
permissions didn't fix this. This would also explain why preferences weren't
being saved, since you wouldn't be able to write to the files in your account's
Library folder.
Probably one person should try this out to see whether this works. I'll give
the URL of the Apple Support Forum thread that discusses this. It's titled
"Lion Permissions Problem":
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3202084?start=0&tstart=0
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Feb 25, 2012, at 8:50 AM, Sarah Alawami wrote:
> Actually I want to know the same thing. I was afraid to ask so thanks for
> doing this. I have this every time I move or copy a folder.
>
> thanks all for any ideas.
> On Feb 25, 2012, at 10:39 AM, Jim Noseworthy wrote:
>
>> Hi Folks:
>>
>> I must have done something somewhere because every time I copy a file, I
>> need to authenticate myself.
>>
>> How do I overcome this issue gang?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>> The triune God created human kind to participate, through the Holy Spirit,
>> in the incarnate Son's communion with the Father.
>>
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