Problem with “Sharing & Permissions”

[Steven Gonzales]

Rule #1: if you don’t know what a change of settings will do, don’t change it.

Here’s some basic info. https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963

[Michael Orlansky]

Morgan it sounds like when you changed permissions you made your scratch disk read only somehow. Check the permissions specifically on the folder where you have your scratch disk. Make sure it’s read write for you and other users on that machine.

Thanks,
Mike

[Morgan Gewert]

Thanks, Mike. Unfortunately, I can’t even boot-up the system.

[Andy Mees]

Have you tried a Safe Boot yet? Restart holding down the Shift key … key it pressed till you see the spinning sprocket animation then leave the Mac for 20 minutes or more and see if it will eventually. (Safe boot up runs disk directory and integrity checks and tries to fix any errors). If it eventually boots up then log in and use Applications/Utilities/Disk Utilty to Repair Permissions. Then see if your Mac will reboot as normal. If the above Safe boot never does get it to boot up then go find your original OS X installer disk. Pop it in and restart holding the C key, it should start from the installer disk. When booted, go to the menubar and choose Disk Utility and run the Repair Disk and Repair Permissions routines. Then see if your Mac will reboot as normal.

In future, don’t mess with Sharing and Permissions … on your media drives the ONLY thing you might want to do is to just tick the “Ignore permissions” checkbox.

Hope this gets your system back up and running

[Morgan Gewert]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the concise guidance. The system failed to bootup with the Safe Boot. I want to try your second option with the Install Disk, but I can’t get the CD drive to open. Tried holding down the mouse while the system tried to boot, but that didn’t work. Any suggests?

[Andy Mees]

Morgan,
Did you press and hold the mouse button immediately after the startup chime? That should force the cd/dvd tray to open.
Failing that try holding down Cmd-S just after the startup chime which should (hopefully) make the Mac boot into single user mode, a basic command line unix boot of the system … then at the prompt and type “sbin/fsck -fy” (without the quotes) and let it run through some checks and repairs (again, hopefully), and finally when done type “reboot” (without the quotes).
Let us know how you get on
Andy

[Morgan Gewert]

Andy, your first suggestion didn’t work so I did the Cmd-S and did the checks & repairs. The final message was that the “volume appears to be ok.” I’ve tried rebooting several times to no avail and again tried holding the mouse down after the chimes. Any other thoughts?

[Andy Mees]

Sorry Morgan,

Sounds like your system is hosed. This is where you restore from your cloned system.
There are other steps you can take like booting in Target Disk Mode (or physically removing the disc) and then and accessing and repairing it from another Mac. Also running Disk Warrior to rebuild the directories … but that won’t work until you’ve successfully managed to access the boot volume for repair.

Failing all those avenues then a a full clean reinstall of OS X and FCS. You should then be able to restore your current projects from the Autosave vault or other backup.

Bit of a nightmare I’m afraid, but a darn good lesson you’ll not forget in a hurry I expect!

Keep your fingers crossed tho, someone else may yet pop in with a solution that I haven’t spotted.

Best
Andy

[Morgan Gewert]

Well, thanks for all your help anyway. If I understand you correctly there’s nothing more I can personally do with this system short of sending it out for repair. Correct?

[Andy Mees]

It all depends on 1) your personal level of proficiency at such stuff, 2) whether you have access to secondary equipment (other Mac’s etc) and suitable software (DiskWarrior etc), and 3) most importantly, how much time and money you can afford to spend on this?

If you have more time than money and are happy to keep at it for a while longer then I’d suggest there are probably better places to seek a solution to a critical system level issue than the COW’s FCP forum (no disrespect intended lots of systems wonks here too but some places are dedicated to this stuff just as here we’re dedicated to FCP) so you ought to spread your search base. But, if time is money, and especially if you’re already way out of your comfort zone, then yes you’ll likely find it far more practical to send your Mac out and have someone better skilled and equipped to deal with the problem for you.

Good Luck
Andy