10-06-2007, 08:21 PM

I am trying to delete some files and the message says I don't have sufficient privledges. I go to get info and the read write is not available and I'm the owner/admin (box is checked). What gives?

10-06-2007, 09:19 PM

Hi Corkymann, Welcome to Mac-Forums!

You are not alone. This sort of deletion issue happens from time to time for reasons I cannot understand. Happily, there is a simple cure.

For the files in question, here is how to give yourself permission again.

1/ Open a Terminal session (Terminal.app)

2/ Use the "cd" (change directory) command to navigate to the folder that the files of interest are in.

3/ As an example, lets assume that they are a bunch of jpg files you want to delete. Once you are in the folder of interest, enter the following command:

chmod +w *.jpg
chmod +x *.jpg

That should do it. You should now be able to delete the files. What the above two commands do is give you "write" and "execute" permissions for all of the jpgs (since this example assumes that the files of interest are jpgs - you would use whatever file names and/or types makes sense here) of interest. Write permission should be enough, but I added the execute as well, as a sort of "kill a fly with a sledgehammer" approach.

Let us know if this works.

After this is done, and you no longer have any immediate problem, I would recommend the infamous Repair Permissions treatment to see if you have any more such problems. I normally "poohoo" this treatment, since many people claim it is the solution to everything but world hunger, but in this case, since you have permissions issues, it makes sense to take this last step.

To do this, open Disk Utility (your Utilities folder). Highlight your disk, and you should see an option near the bottom of the right hand side of the screen for "Repair Permissions". Click this and settle back with a coffee or something ... it takes a while. This will find any permissions issues in a reasonable subset of your files (it doesn't do them all, just key ones) and will repair anything that it finds.

10-10-2007, 09:13 PM

In Windows, when this happens, there is a program called "Unlocker". This is quite common in Windows happening, it seems to be because a program locking handle is still in place on the file, even after the program exits.

I don't know if this is the same on a mac, or if there is an equivalent of the "Unlocker" app for the mac.

10-10-2007, 09:28 PM

Just an FYI. You should also be able to combine the commands to the following:

chmod +wx *.jpg

T

10-10-2007, 10:30 PM

Originally Posted by mac747

Just an FYI. You should also be able to combine the commands to the following:

chmod +wx *.jpg

T

Agreed. However, I wasn't sure if this was the same between Linux and FreeBSD, on which Mac OS is based, so I spelled them out separately. I wasn't at my Mac at the time so I couldn't test it out.