I recently installed Leopard on my iMac and aside from one or two minor glitches I have loved it. However, today I discovered that one of the folders on my external hard drive is now locked (it wasn't locked when I had Tiger and this is the first time I've tried to access it since the install). I can "read" the folder but I no longer have permission to "write." I am the administrator (as well as the only user) of the computer, and therefor should have full access to all files. I am also the only user of the external hard drive.

When I try to save a picture into the folder this is the message I get:


After selecting "Authenticate" and typing in my password I get this message:


And if I go to the actual folder and select "Get Info" this is what I see:


You may notice that there is a check mark beside "Locked" but it will not allow me to uncheck it.

Does anyone know how to make this folder writeable again?

11/6/2007 5:15:52 PM

There have been a few reports of the admin status being changed on profiles regarding the leopard upgrade


There are a few tutorials on how to go in and make a new one.

My friend has the same problem.

11/6/2007 5:21:06 PM

I had the problem where I was downgraded to a normal user after I installed leopard. You can boot into single user mode and set the password for root. Login to root and upgrade your normal user account to admin.

You can find tutorials online if you dont know how to do this.

11/6/2007 6:13:44 PM

did you do an upgrade instead of a clean install?

so far from what i've seen clean install is the best by far. i'm not sure that i've had any problems so far
then again i could be lucky for once in my life

11/6/2007 6:25:44 PM

^^When I open "System Preferences" and click on "Accounts" it has my picture and my name with "Admin" underneath. I assume this means that I have not been downgraded.

^Pretty sure i just did the upgrade (I'm not the most computer savvy person in the world). But I bought the disc, inserted it into my computer (which had Tiger on it at the time) and followed the instructions. It took about an hour and a half. Except for this locked folder issue all of my settings from Tiger transfered over to Leopard without a problem.

11/6/2007 6:38:46 PM

You should be able to fix this from the Terminal, but before having you type out those commands see if this app will work first:

http://macchampion.com/arbysoft/

It's a GUI front-end to the chmod utility, which might be helpful to you since you're not "the most computer savvy". If that doesn't work let me know

11/6/2007 11:24:06 PM

^

good idea

11/6/2007 11:37:26 PM

^^ could try that first definitely
this is just a permissions problem as ppl have already said... ask the above about the terminal commands or i can look em up for you, don't know them off-hand.

11/7/2007 2:49:30 AM

I download BatChmod and followed the instructions but the folder still remains locked. I checked out the "Help" part of BatChmod and the last thing it says is...
"There are a few situations where BatChmod cannot change the privileges of some files. For example, if a file is set as immutable, no one can modify it in any way, and BatChmod is no exception.

Also, if some files are locked and you do not select the Unlock option, BatChmod will not report any errors. This is due to the nature of the Unix commands that BatChmod uses, for which it is very complex to get feedback.

When applying privileges to files and folders, the Finder is not always updated right away. Although it should respect the new privileges, it may have the wrong icons and some privileges cached. Logging out and back in should resolve this."

I checked "unlock" and I've tried restarting my computer but still no luck. Does this mean that the file is immutable? Can I change that in Terminal or some other way? I don't understand why installing Leopard would have locked some files on my hard drive but not others.

11/7/2007 1:20:10 PM

root can do anything.

11/7/2007 7:57:49 PM

Just for the hell of it, follow this tutorial to enable root user:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106290

log out and into root, and see if you can access those locked files.

11/7/2007 9:10:33 PM