hey guys, so I just went into the "Get Info" for both my Macintosh HD and my 1TB Lacie external thunderbolt drive, unlocked the window, set all 3 parameters to "Read & Write", and selected the option "apply this to entire volume" or something .. then I restarted my computer and it's been stuck on the grey Apple loading screen for 3 hours.. the little grey wheel is moving the entire time, and I hear some reading going on every once and a while on the MacBook Pro, but it's not finishing thru with the boot... I waited about 3 hours hopeful that it just had to do something time consuming like indexing or something after I applied those permissions, but eventually I figured maybe it was frozen, so I did a hard reset by holding down the power button, waited 20 seconds and then powered back on, just to boot back to that same grey window with the grey apple logo and grey spinning wheel.. I've been here for an hour now after the first hard reset, but it doesn't seem to want to boot.. is this normal for what I did with applying permissions to both my Macintosh HD and my (practically full) 1TB Lacie Thunderbolt drive? The lights on the external drive are all solid, so I don't think it's reading or writing anything, so I'm not sure that's the problem.. can anybody help?
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Applied "read & write" permissions to entire disk, restarted, now it's stuck..
- Thread starter lip5016
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The mistake was to set "Macintosh HD" permissions on all parameters to READ & WRITE, which now gives you an unbootable volume.
To remedy that, you could use Internet Recovery (press CMD+R after the startup chime) or any Mac OS X installer you have at hand compatible with your Mac to restore your Mac, and even if you don't have a backup, and don't do a clean install, reinstalling Mac OS X will not delete any data.
To remedy that, you could use Internet Recovery (press CMD+R after the startup chime) or any Mac OS X installer you have at hand compatible with your Mac to restore your Mac, and even if you don't have a backup, and don't do a clean install, reinstalling Mac OS X will not delete any data.
okay I am reinstalling osX now.. why did this happen though? I've done this Macintosh HD before and never had any problems with the restart.. everything was already set to "Read & Write" on Macintosh HD from the last time I did it.. I just did the apply enclosing folders option again today bc I didn't have a problem before and didn't think it could hurt
Because not every folder and file needs READ & WRITE permissions from your admin account.
It is best to leave that alone.
I remember doing something similar stupid in the first year of my Mac OS X experience and I had to reinstall Mac OS X back then 9 years ago.
Maybe someone with more technical UNIX knowledge like calderone can answer you in more detail.
Did you also set your user as the owner of the files by clicking the gear icon, and selecting Make (username) the owner? That should certainly render the system unbootable.
It's best to leave the permissions of system files untouched, unless you know exactly what you are doing.
It's best to leave the permissions of system files untouched, unless you know exactly what you are doing.
As a long time *NIX programmer.user (before I retired) playing around with permissions is a good way to wind up with an un-bootable system. I remember some CS grads who said one of our *nix systems would work much faster if he just changed some permissions. I told him it was a bad idea, but he did it anyway and was extremely upset when the system wouldn't boot.
Then I showed him how to recover from a backup. geez.
*NIX permissions are very tricky, and sometimes one sloppy program won't work unless permissions are changed on xx file, then you change it, and suddenly a different program will not be able to access xx file.
Then I showed him how to recover from a backup. geez.
*NIX permissions are very tricky, and sometimes one sloppy program won't work unless permissions are changed on xx file, then you change it, and suddenly a different program will not be able to access xx file.