Lion OS cannot write email preferences

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I have recently upgraded to Lion and now find that, when trying to change any email preferences, I get the error message that the preferences cannot be written, with the suggestion that the ~/Library/Preferences folder may have incorrect permissions or that the disc is full. The disc is far from full and, as far as I can see, the permissions are correct. Any suggestions as to how to fix this problem?
 

Raz0rEdge

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What ARE the permissions of the ~/Library/Preferences folder?
 
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in the Get Info:

admin read and write
system read and write
wheel read only
everyone read only

in Terminal:
drwxr-xr-x+ 255 britbryant staff 8670 2 Sep 15:45 Preferences

where "britbryant" is me
 
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There seems to be other problems as well:
1. Every time I open Mail, I get the message about Junk Mail Transition irrespective of which option I select.
2. Mai, Firefox, iCal and another app open every time I start up the computer, even if I have closed them down before shutdown.
3. Some system login preferences revert back to a previous setting every time I startup.
 
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I think I have now solved the problem and, for the benefit of anyone else who has a similar problem, I offer the following, admittedly inexpert, diagnosis and remedy. Please feel free to correct anything that is erroneous.

The source of the problem seemed to be that an Access Control List (ACL) or lists were somehow introduced to the Library/Preferences folder. This prevented any preferences being saved, but only trying to save the Mail preferences actually resulted in an error message. A clue that ACL were applied to the Preferences file was given by the Disk Utility report when using the Repair Disk Permissions option.

Using advice given suggested in the following link,

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3209638?start=0&tstart=0

I opened a terminal and removed the ACL by entering:

sudo chmod -RN ~

and

sudo chown -R `id -un` ~


This seems to have fixed all the problems.
 

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