Finicky Permissions

[Macaddicttt]

So my parents have this Quicksilver G4, and it always has problems with permissions. They never seem to be right, and they don't always change when you tell them to. This problem has continued even after a hard drive failure, a brand new hard drive, and a brand new reinstall.

For example, my brother has a non-admin account on the computer. When the new install was done, he could download things just fine. Now he cannot because his download folder is his desktop, and for some reason it switched ownership to someone else. Then after trying to switch the permissions by entering an admin password, they immediately switch back to the previous settings.

It drives me crazy because I can't change the permissions on anything. What the heck is going on?

And yes, I did repair permissions...

 

[mklos]

Which version of Mac OS X is this? I would try logging in as "root" and then changing the permissions. Just DO NOT forget to disable "root" access when you're done. This is critical to OS X security as the "root" user is the "god user" of the OS and can do anything at any time, such as delete the OS X System Folder while the OS is running for example.

 

[Macaddicttt]

Which version of Mac OS X is this? I would try logging in as "root" and then changing the permissions. Just DO NOT forget to disable "root" access when you're done. This is critical to OS X security as the "root" user is the "god user" of the OS and can do anything at any time, such as delete the OS X System Folder while the OS is running for example.

Yeah, I forgot to say that it's running Tiger.

I'll try changing them as the root user, but that still doesn't exactly fix the problem. Permissions should be able to be changed without resorting to the root user. And it's a complete mystery to me as to how this problem survived a completely new installation of OS X on a completely new hard drive.

But thanks for the suggestion. It'll have to do for now until I get the larger problem solved.

 

[mklos]

If that doesn't work, then you may need to do an archive and install of Tiger. That will just install Mac OS X overtop of itself so you won't lose your applications, or user home folders.