EMERGENCY need help NOW

Kokopelli said:

Not that I know of no.
Short way "chmod -R u+rwx ./kevintrump" This gives the owner read write and execute rights to all files in the kevintrump directory and all subdirectories. It does not otherwise change permissions, which is better than the way I was having you do it before.

Click to expand...

Doing this, I got :
/Users/kevintrump/Desktop/My stuff: Operation not permitted

It is probably saying this because I locked the file before going on to put the 'lock' on the hard drive

Again, I right-clicked on my hard drive icon, selected 'get info', then changed the permissions of the hard drive (I think)

EDIT: Just tried logging in... nothing.

Ok I went back and reread your initial post. I misread you originally. I was fixated that it was your home directory that you were locked out of. If you did not click "set these permissions for subfolders" or however it is worded we should be ok. I don't think you did though, if you had the Users folders would have been reset as well, which they were not. It is possible it killed the system some part of the way through the process though.

Have you tried running repair permissions from the DVD? (Can you repair permissions from the DVD?)

Now unfortunately we are going to have to hunt down what you changed. Much more difficult and given the fact that I like my Mac the way it is I won't try and replicate the issue.

cd /
ls -l is most everything owned by root? If so we are in good shape. If not we have a mess on our hands. let us know and don't bother continuing. You should be fine though since your home directories are were not bollixed. I think you just reset the HD volume link, but am not sure.
cd volumes
ls -l There should be a "Macintosh HD => /" in the list. Who owns it and what is the group? if it is anything but root admin then that is what you changed I think. chown rootdmin Macintosh\ HD note there is no -R in this command.
Finally make sure permissions are lrwxw-xr-x if not chmod 755 Macintosh\ HD should fix it.

now cd /dev then ls -l disk* are they all owned by root operator? If not do not change them yet. Let us know who they are owned by then we will adjust. Messing with dev is dangerous potentially so we need to make sure we are on the same page.

EDIT: I attached a text file with the permissions of my root folder. That will serve as a baseline for what yours should look like.

View attachment dump.txt

Kokopelli said:

Ok I went back and reread your initial post. I misread you originally. I was fixated that it was your home directory that you were locked out of. If you did not click "set these permissions for subfolders" or however it is worded we should be ok. I don't think you did though, if you had the Users folders would have been reset as well, which they were not. It is possible it killed the system some part of the way through the process though.

Have you tried running repair permissions from the DVD? (Can you repair permissions from the DVD?)

Now unfortunately we are going to have to hunt down what you changed. Much more difficult and given the fact that I like my Mac the way it is I won't try and replicate the issue.

cd /
ls -l is most everything owned by root? If so we are in good shape. If not we have a mess on our hands. let us know and don't bother continuing. You should be fine though since your home directories are were not bollixed. I think you just reset the HD volume link, but am not sure.
cd volumes
ls -l There should be a "Macintosh HD => /" in the list. Who owns it and what is the group? if it is anything but root admin then that is what you changed I think. chown rootdmin Macintosh\ HD note there is no -R in this command.
Finally make sure permissions are lrwxw-xr-x if not chmod 755 Macintosh\ HD should fix it.

now cd /dev then ls -l disk* are they all owned by root operator? If not do not change them yet. Let us know who they are owned by then we will adjust. Messing with dev is dangerous potentially so we need to make sure we are on the same page.

EDIT: I attached a text file with the permissions of my root folder. That will serve as a baseline for what yours should look like.

Click to expand...

I will try the above, and get back with you. I have to go for a while so I will not post for a few hours. I really really appreciate your help thus far~!
I will post soon,
Thanks,
Kevin

I sent you a PM by the way. I will probably be asleep by the time you get back but feel free to contact me on IM if I am on line and we'll see if we can work this out.

Alternatively perhaps someone else might be able to give better/different advice. Unfortunately I work the Unix side better than the OS X side, and that is not always the easier path.

For the sake of completeness and for anyone who may find this in a search later:

In safe mode we verified all the permissions looked correct, and they did. We next booted using the dvd and opened the disk utility using the following directions.

Repair permissions came up clean, but a verify disk came up with an error on the mach_kernel.prelink. After a repair disk everything came up correctly.

So happy computing is here again.

Kokopelli said:

For the sake of completeness and for anyone who may find this in a search later:

In safe mode we verified all the permissions looked correct, and they did. We next booted using the dvd and opened the disk utility using the following directions.

Repair permissions came up clean, but a verify disk came up with an error on the mach_kernel.prelink. After a repair disk everything came up correctly.

So happy computing is here again.

Click to expand...

Thank you for providing us with the solution..

PowerBookG4 said:

Thank you for providing us with the solution..

Click to expand...

Yes- again, thank you so much!!

The support you gave (Kokopelli) in this thread is amazing, as well as the support you gave me yesterday...

Outstanding member.