Can't save System Preferences settings (High Sierra)

[David Mansfield]

It's mostly just a nuisance, but I can't save my System Preferences settings-- most notably File Sharing. It's system-wide, as I have a "test" account for things like this.

I suspected permissions problems, so I used Terminal to repair my permissions as Apple suggests, with diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`. I got a -69841 error, so I ran chflags -R nouchg ~, then ran the first command again and it worked. Also I found out my sudoers file had corrupted permissions, but I ran visudo and repaired them.

I'm out of ideas, and don't want to wipe my drive and do a clean install. Any ideas??

 

[chrfr]

The fixes you tried only affect the user level files so they'd have had no effect on the systemwide preferences. It might be worth trying to run the full OS installer without erasing (and then apply any appropriate security updates) as this may reset incorrect permissions.

 

[David Mansfield]

I did try a system reinstall from the Recovery partition, no help.

 

[appltech]

Came across this command

sudo find ~ $TMPDIR.. -exec chflags -h nouchg,nouappnd,noschg,nosappnd {} + -exec chown -h $UID {} + -exec chmod +rw {} + -exec chmod -h -N {} + -type d -exec chmod -h +x {} + 2>&-

It "will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership, permissions, and access controls to the default. If you've intentionally set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted."

 

[David Mansfield]

From what I can tell it's a system-wide problem, as it happens with more than one user account. I could use some advice for solutions that help at the root level.