Boot Drive read only on Macbook pro Help!

[GreenApple29]

Hello all
out of the blue today i tried to download an application (Xcode beta to be exact) and i couldn't install it
i right clicked on my internal boot drive and i saw that the drive was read only
very confused since i haven't touched any of permissions...
Does anyone have any ideas or experience regarding this issue?
Thanks

 

[Weaselboy]

Where did you right click that you are seeing this read only message? Can you save anything to the drive at all?

 

[GreenApple29]

Where did you right click that you are seeing this read only message? Can you save anything to the drive at all?

right clicked on the Macintosh HD icon on the sidebar of the Finder and the on "Get Info"
and dialog box opened saying read only on the preferences
a new problem occurred though more serious
i tried a few things and now..whne i turned on the macbook i am seeing the grey start up screen with apple logo and spinning wheel but nothing is happening
have tried a few things
like reseting PVRAM
Safe boot
etc
nothing
only thing that left is restoring from TM which due to wifi is taking ages
will get back when this is done
i hope that i caused the problem with permission..i hope there is nothing wrong with the disk cos ill have to wait for repair a week to have it back

 

[Weaselboy]

right clicked on the Macintosh HD icon on the sidebar of the Finder and the on "Get Info"
and dialog box opened saying read only on the preferences
a new problem occurred though more serious
i tried a few things and now..whne i turned on the macbook i am seeing the grey start up screen with apple logo and spinning wheel but nothing is happening
have tried a few things
like reseting PVRAM
Safe boot
etc
nothing
only thing that left is restoring from TM which due to wifi is taking ages
will get back when this is done
i hope that i caused the problem with permission..i hope there is nothing wrong with the disk cos ill have to wait for repair a week to have it back

I'm still not clear where you are seeing read only. Below is get info on my machine. Can you point out there what you mean?

There is nothing on a Mac that would spontaneously make your disk read only. The grey spinning coupled with this make me suspicious maybe your drive is failing, and a Time Machine restore will not fix that.

What OS version are you on? If Lion or newer, try holding command-r when booting and using Disk Util from there to do a repair disk. What does that say?

 

[GreenApple29]

I'm still not clear where you are seeing read only. Below is get info on my machine. Can you point out there what you mean?

There is nothing on a Mac that would spontaneously make your disk read only. The grey spinning coupled with this make me suspicious maybe your drive is failing, and a Time Machine restore will not fix that.

What OS version are you on? If Lion or newer, try holding command-t when booting and using Disk Util from there to do a repair disk. What does that say?

on your screenshot i had the same..maybe t was my mistake
on the screenshot it says "you can only read"
have i done something wrong?
i mean..after that inlayed with permissions..and propably that is the reason why my mac dint boot up and stayed on grey screen with apple and spinning wheel
i could do the suggestion you mentioned but i can't now..cos I'm restoring from a TM backup

maybe i acted too quickly....

 

[DeltaMac]

...
What OS version are you on? If Lion or newer, try holding command-t when booting and using Disk Util from there to do a repair disk. What does that say?
...

If you do this - command-t won't do anything useful. Weaselboy SHOULD have said command-r, which will boot you to the recovery partition, where you can (among other choices) run Disk Utility.

 

[GreenApple29]

If you do this - command-t won't do anything useful. Weaselboy SHOULD have said command-r, which will boot you to the recovery partition, where you can (among other choices) run Disk Utility.

yes thats something i tried even though not sure if i pressed both keys at same time
at the moment though i am restoring from TM back up
i suppose if there was a drive failure that would have stopped the restore?
the restore dis at almost 50 per cent and has four hours to complete
see how it goes
just curious though..
why does it say "you can only read"
and if this is normal
why when i tried to install Xcode downloaded from apple's dev center it didn't let me install?

 

[Weaselboy]

If you do this - command-t won't do anything useful. Weaselboy SHOULD have said command-r, which will boot you to the recovery partition, where you can (among other choices) run Disk Utility.

Thanks for the catch of my typo. Obviously it should be command-r.

----------

yes thats something i tried even though not sure if i pressed both keys at same time
at the moment though i am restoring from TM back up
i suppose if there was a drive failure that would have stopped the restore?
the restore dis at almost 50 per cent and has four hours to complete
see how it goes
just curious though..
why does it say "you can only read"
and if this is normal
why when i tried to install Xcode downloaded from apple's dev center it didn't let me install?

What year is your Mac and what OS version are you on?

I'm still not clear where you are seeing this "you can only read" message. Can you be more specific?

 

[GreenApple29]

Thanks for the catch of my typo. Obviously it should be command-r.

----------



What year is your Mac and what OS version are you on?

I'm still not clear where you are seeing this "you can only read" message. Can you be more specific?

macbook pro 13 retina

as for the message
check your screenshot
below the hard drive image
it says sharing and preferences
just below that it says
you can only read
it shows this on your screenshot too

 

[DeltaMac]

...
I'm still not clear where you are seeing this "you can only read" message. Can you be more specific?

@Weaselboy - your own post of your Get Info window shows You can only Read, as the first item under Sharing & Permissions. That's likely what the OP saw, and took that as a problem.

 

[GreenApple29]

@Weaselboy - your own post of your Get Info window shows You can only Read, as the first item under Sharing & Permissions. That's likely what the OP saw, and took that as a problem.

so its not a problem?
i mean..i had the same problem with an external drive and i couldn't move files to that drive when it showed "you can only read " message ...

 

[Weaselboy]

macbook pro 13 retina

as for the message
check your screenshot
below the hard drive image
it says sharing and preferences
just below that it says
you can only read
it shows this on your screenshot too

I see what you mean now... I thought you were referring to some other message that showed the entire drive as read only. If yours get info looks like mine, that is completely normal and not causing you a problem.

So let's back up. You downloaded an Xcode beta DMG direct from Apple and could not install it? What exactly did you do and what happened?

So everything else on your Mac seems to be working fine?

----------

so its not a problem?
i mean..i had the same problem with an external drive and i couldn't move files to that drive when it showed "you can only read " message ...

That is a different issue. If your get info looks like mine, your is normal and not a problem.

 

[GreenApple29]

I see what you mean now... I thought you were referring to some other message that showed the entire drive as read only. If yours get info looks like mine, that is completely normal and not causing you a problem.

So let's back up. You downloaded an Xcode beta DMG direct from Apple and could not install it? What exactly did you do and what happened?

So everything else on your Mac seems to be working fine?

i can't remember the message i got..it seemed it couldn't install the version that i downloaded
plus i can't check now cos now as i said its a mess
i am restoring from time machine back up and see if everything is ok
only problem is that back up is thrtee days old..and Xcode project...is backdated

 

[Weaselboy]

i can't remember the message i got..it seemed it couldn't install the version that i downloaded
plus i can't check now cos now as i said its a mess
i am restoring from time machine back up and see if everything is ok
only problem is that back up is thrtee days old..and Xcode project...is backdated

It sounds like maybe just a version of Xcode that is not compatible with Mavericks and the installer stopped you from using it.

 

[GreenApple29]

It sounds like maybe just a version of Xcode that is not compatible with Mavericks and the installer stopped you from using it.

so all this trouble and restore for nothing huh?
so why does it show on get info you can only read?
just curious
hope after restore everything would be ok!

 

[Weaselboy]

so all this trouble and restore for nothing huh?

Yeah... pretty much.

so why does it show on get info you can only read?
just curious
hope after restore everything would be ok!

Because Macintosh HD is at the root level of drive and as a normal user you don't have write access there. If you do the same thing on /Applications for example, you will see you do have read/write access.

 

[GreenApple29]

Yeah... pretty much.




Because Macintosh HD is at the root level of drive and as a normal user you don't have write access there. If you do the same thing on /Applications for example, you will see you do have read/write access.

Image

Restore completed (even though at start i thought this will take ages cos of wifiit actually went pretty good!)
now back to my system even though a bit backdated due to a restore point four days ago...

as for the sharing yeah i see what you mean
still don't understand though what happened and when i tried to start mac it stuck on grey screen with apple logo and spinning wheel?
maybe a problem with permissions?
as for downloading apps and install them it seems that everything is ok now...

 

[Weaselboy]

Restore completed (even though at start i thought this will take ages cos of wifiit actually went pretty good!)
now back to my system even though a bit backdated due to a restore point four days ago...

as for the sharing yeah i see what you mean
still don't understand though what happened and when i tried to start mac it stuck on grey screen with apple logo and spinning wheel?
maybe a problem with permissions?
as for downloading apps and install them it seems that everything is ok now...

Unless you manually messed around with disk permission settings, nothing would have changed to cause that error. Did you try the command-r boot and Disk Util check I mentioned earlier? That would show any disk errors.

 

[GreenApple29]

Unless you manually messed around with disk permission settings, nothing would have changed to cause that error. Did you try the command-r boot and Disk Util check I mentioned earlier? That would show any disk errors.

will try this now...even though system now runs good after time machine restore
yes i think i messed up with permissions thinking that my drive is read only..but as you mentioned this isn't the case and drive was read and write so was my fault
The good side was that i had a time machine backup
do you think i should run a command r now?or it doesn't matter anymore?

 

[Weaselboy]

will try this now...even though system now runs good after time machine restore
yes i think i messed up with permissions thinking that my drive is read only..but as you mentioned this isn't the case and drive was read and write so was my fault
The good side was that i had a time machine backup
do you think i should run a command r now?or it doesn't matter anymore?

I would do the command-r and disk check anyway. It certainly does not hurt anything.

 

[GreenApple29]

I would do the command-r and disk check anyway. It certainly does not hurt anything.

Just did command r entered disk utility and check disk
Green message appeared saying disk appears to be ok
Pressed repair permissions as well
Everything seems to be fine
I think it was my fault since machine is only three weeks old

----------

I would do the command-r and disk check anyway. It certainly does not hurt anything.

Also would like to say a big thanks to you and your recommendations
Thank you for your time)

 

[Weaselboy]

Also would like to say a big thanks to you and your recommendations
Thank you for your time)

You bet... glad to help.

 

[barkmonster]

Boot into recovery mode.

Open terminal

Follow these instructions: -

In Terminal type the following sequence (obviously replace “Volumename with the name of your volume):

sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/Volumename
sudo chown 0:80 /Volumes/Volumename
sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/Volumename
sudo chmod -N /Volumes/Volumename

but if your hard drives name includes a [space] like this: “My HD”, then you must write the command like this:

sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/firstname\ secondname
sudo chown 0:80 /Volumes/firstname\ secondname
sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/firstname\ secondname
sudo chmod -N /Volumes/firstname\ secondname

It'll reset all the permissions on the drive completely where as "repair permissions" with disk utility won't help.

It's also handy for situations where you've maybe upgraded your OS on 1 disk and store files on another which can often end up with it's permissions changed to "custom". It happened to me when trying to create a dual boot of 10.8.5 and 10.6.8 and it was the only thing that unlocked the drive again.

That's what happens when you hit reply and spend about 15 minutes digging around your HD for a text file before you do. Sorry, your problem is already solved, ignore above (or keep it for future use)