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MP 1,1-5,1 Messed up the permissions/ACLs on native drives (from drive running OpenCore), how best to restore without wipe?

boody

boody

macrumors newbie
Original poster
(Crosspost from reddit, hope that's OK--hoping users here will have suggestions. Also not sure if this is appropriate subforum--or if this would fit better in the Mojave/Mountain Lion subforums)

I recently got macOS Monterey running well using OCLP on my Mid-2010 Mac Pro 5,1 on its own drive (metal GPU, 64gb ram, 2x X5690 3.46). I have two other discrete boot drives running native OSX versions (one running Mojave, the other Mountain Lion). I needed to set things up this way, as there are still projects I can only run correctly on the respective older loadouts, and I didn't want to overcomplicate things using partitions, since I have 4 bays I can use on the MP. I use the fourth bay for a shared storage drive.

All was running fine, with a few manageable quirks, until I made a truly naive and silly mistake. I got greedy, thinking it would be nice to be able to access all four drives on the Mac Pro remotely over wifi from my Macbook Pro. Initially the MBP could only access the Monterey user folders, not the user folders on the other two boot drives. So I did the dumbest thing and adjusted permissions for those drives from the Monterey File Sharing screen, even going as far as choosing the more aggressive "apply permissions to enclosed items." Predictably, this totally messed up the permissions on the two native drives. Thankfully, I can still access the files on the drives just fine from Monterey (intend to perform a CCC backup of all three boot drives before moving forward any further, which I clearly should have done before all this--having only made backups of the important files themselves). But neither older drive will fully boot properly--Monterey drive still works fine since permissions weren't changed there. Currently, the Mojave drive will boot and allow me to login, but Finder hangs as soon as my dock and desktop icons load, and then freezes up continuously each time it relaunches. The Mountain Lion drive won't complete a boot at all -- hanging on the apple logo with a continuous spinning load status indicator.

Here's what I've tried so far to restore the Mojave drive (I haven't tried to tackle the Mountain Lion drive, as I expect that will be more difficult to restore--if at all possible, and I want to be extra careful before I start that process, since the loadout is more precious to me).
  1. Ran recovery mode, but following the open core install, the only recovery mode I can access is Monterey's. Nonetheless, I ran first aid via disk utility on the Mojave drive from the Monterey recovery mode. It didn't find any issues but nothing was improved.
  2. Thinking I likely messed up root permissions on the Mojave drive, tried to restore root ownership via series of chown terminal commands on Mojave system folders, user folder, and private folder.
  3. Also moved and renamed Mojave's finder preferences file, and removed lock flags.
None of these fixed the problems. Mojave still boots and lets me login, but immediately hangs when Finder gets going. Since these didn't seem to make a difference, I expect what I did was screw up more than just the permissions, but also the drives' Access Control Lists. I'm unsure how one is supposed to restore those with minimal impact.

Can anyone make any suggestions for next steps? Here are my next two ideas, but I wanted to get some input from people who know more than I do before I moved any further forward:
  • Physically remove the OCLP Monterey disk to try to boot into Mojave's own recovery mode (worried this might cause an infinite boot loop, or something else unintended), or just not work. Also not sure what I should do if and when I get in: First Aid again? something else?
  • Boot Mojave installer from USB and run a reinstall, keeping my files intact, but refreshing all the system files. I'm worried this will still mess with the loadout leading to old software no longer functioning, but maybe I'm past that point anyway. Does anyone know if doing this is even likely to actually fix the broken permissions/ACLs? I'm also worried that running the Mojave installer again will mess with my firmware and prevent me from getting back into OCLP Monterey, but I'm hoping this isn't likely since I was already running the right firmware to be be able to install Mojave (i.e., will a reinstall even touch the current firmware?)
If I can get Mojave up and running properly again, I'd be really glad, but I'd be even more thrilled if I could also get Mountain Lion restored, as that's the older loadout with a far more important loadout with files that can't be opened with newer OS (e.g., 32bit Logic projects, etc). If anyone has suggestions for the best way to approach the Mountain Lion drive, I'd appreciate that tremendously as well. I've been extra cautious with that one as I don't want to make the problem worse than it already is.

Also, if folks have suggestions for other forums to crosspost this to, I'm eager to cast as wide a net as possible before I decide how to proceed.

Thanks in advance for any help!
 
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Do you have Time Machine backups of the ML and Mojave drives? Easiest solution (though time-consuming) is to reinstall the OS fresh on each, then restore from Time Machine.

If you have no TM backups ... tsk, tsk. It would be unwise to mess with the original drives at this point, they're your only copies.

For the following steps, direct-boot by holding the Option key, like we always used to do. This assumes you have a Mac-firmware video card installed (or injected GOP into your cMP firmware).

Even though OpenCore is installed, you can still direct-boot macOS versions up to Big Sur. Direct booting is the only way to boot Lion through Sierra. Your Mountain Lion will not boot through OpenCore, so that's a reason why you're seeing basic boot failure.

OCLP will boot:
Snow Leopard
High Sierra through Sequoia.

Direct booting will boot:
Snow Leopard through Big Sur
(Catalina requires DosDude patched install first, then will direct-boot)
(Big Sur requires OCLP for install and patching first, then will direct-boot)

I'd plug in a fresh drive, install Mojave on it, and let Migration Assistant pull everything across from the borked Mojave drive. That will fix all your system permissions, and hopefully fix some permissions within your user folder.

Plug in another fresh drive, install Mountain Lion on it, let Migration Assistant pull everything across from the borked Mountain Lion drive.

After this is all fixed up, the original drives can become Time Machine drives, so you have insurance in the future.
 
boody said:
Thanks for responding. Would BatchMOD do anything that the chown commands I mentioned wouldn't already have done? Or do you have suggestions for a specific application of chown/BatchMOD based on my specific circumstances?
Click to expand...
Make a backup, test the backup, make a backup of that backup, test that backup, then maybe clone that one and run BatchMOD on the root of that drive. Bet it works.
 
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reader50 said:
Do you have Time Machine backups of the ML and Mojave drives? Easiest solution (though time-consuming) is to reinstall the OS fresh on each, then restore from Time Machine.

If you have no TM backups ... tsk, tsk. It would be unwise to mess with the original drives at this point, they're your only copies.

For the following steps, direct-boot by holding the Option key, like we always used to do. This assumes you have a Mac-firmware video card installed (or injected GOP into your cMP firmware).

Even though OpenCore is installed, you can still direct-boot macOS versions up to Big Sur. Direct booting is the only way to boot Lion through Sierra. Your Mountain Lion will not boot through OpenCore, so that's a reason why you're seeing basic boot failure.

OCLP will boot:
Snow Leopard
High Sierra through Sequoia.

Direct booting will boot:
Snow Leopard through Big Sur
(Catalina requires DosDude patched install first, then will direct-boot)
(Big Sur requires OCLP for install and patching first, then will direct-boot)

I'd plug in a fresh drive, install Mojave on it, and let Migration Assistant pull everything across from the borked Mojave drive. That will fix all your system permissions, and hopefully fix some permissions within your user folder.

Plug in another fresh drive, install Mountain Lion on it, let Migration Assistant pull everything across from the borked Mountain Lion drive.

After this is all fixed up, the original drives can become Time Machine drives, so you have insurance in the future.
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot for this response.

  1. No, I foolishly have not kept Time Machine backups for quite some time now. I did preserve all important personal files, etc., but no recent clones or TM backups that would allow me back into the previous working states. Naive, I know. When I used to run TM, I was running with small boot drives and keeping data totally separate (better than my current practice). When I started running on larger 2tb boot drives, I just couldn't afford big enough storage solutions to meet the 2-3x requirements of TM. I've since cloned both borked drives as best I can under the circumstances, and as I said, I do also have multiple backups of all the most important personal files (just no way to open many of them properly). Whether or not I dig myself out of this hole, I am absolutely returning to TM, even if it takes some substantial investment.
  2. I already boot natively (via option key--not using OCLP--as I do have a Mac-flashed GPU) into both Mojave and Mountain Lion. I've done this for years; I only recently added Monterey via OCLP because Mojave was starting to become difficult to use for basic admin tasks (no more browser updates, dropped gmail support, etc).
  3. In the time since my last post, I did manage to get into both Mojave and Mountain Lion's respective recovery modes but still haven't gotten much further.
    • I ran some diagnostics and found that with the Mojave drive, most ACLs and permissions had already been corrected (fixed one obvious remaining ACL problem on my user folder, but otherwise it appeared to look as it should). Nonetheless, now Mojave won't boot either, and verbose mode doesn't reveal any particular problems; it just hangs towards the end of the boot sequence, after getting through DAD checks--so even though I barely did anything else (fixed one remaining obvious ACL problem), I seem to have made things worse somehow. I haven't been able to run any proper drive diagnostics on the Mojave drive because its recovery mode won't let me unmount the disk to run fsck. I've only been able to run the limited fsck possible from single-user mode, which didn't reveal any issues. I'd like to run fsck properly from recovery, though, as I don't trust it to reveal much in single-user mode, so I might try internet recovery mode, as I'm hesitant to do anything more on the Mojave drive from Monterey's OCLP recovery environment. I just don't really trust the relationship between recovery mode in an OCLP environment and drives outside that environment (maybe this is misguided?).
    • On Mountain Lion, predictably, there were plenty of permissions and ACL problems, and also I found b-tree problems that fsck (said) it managed to fix. Running verbose boot on Mountain Lion revealed, however, that the Mac is forcing the ML drive into read-only anyway. Running fsck again afterwards showed the same b-tree problems remained, so fsck seemingly wasn't actually able to fix those and probably that's what's pushing the drive in read-only, thus preventing boot from succeeding. I stopped there for fear of making more trouble but am considering running DiskWarrior as a last ditch effort, if necessary. Others keep telling me it really can work wonders on HFS drives with b-tree problems--I've only used it in the past to fix problematic external data drives, never attempted (or needed) to use it on a boot drive. Ultimately, it seems messing up the permissions and ACLs caused deeper filesystem problems that I'm not confident I'll actually be able to fix.
  4. All this said, your idea to try Migration Assistant instead of messing with the existing drives any further is a good one. I appreciate it. I'll definitely try that before attempting to reinstall Mojave or Mountain Lion on the borked drives--or running DiskWarrior on the Mountain Lion drive. My concern with Mountain Lion is that even if Migration Assistant manages to leav behind the ACL and permissions problems (and b-tree problems), it won't preserve the licenses and other hardware-specific quirks to allow me to run old projects, so it won't do me much good ultimately. I'm also concerned that Migration Assistant may simply fail because of the b-tree problems. Either way, it's a less invasive approach than reinstalling, so I'll definitely give it a shot first. Thanks again for the suggestion.
 
DiskWarrior is a good product for HFS+ drives, though we're all getting old waiting for the DW 6 release that can fix APFS drives. I'd let DW do its thing on each problem drive. It will fix all low-level filesystem problems. If you're lucky, it will fix permissions enough to restore operation, though I've never tested DW against your particular problem. You might need these low-level problems fixed before trying Migration Assistant (or an OS reinstall) to prevent an abort during the process.
 
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boody said:
... When I started running on larger 2tb boot drives, I just couldn't afford big enough storage solutions to meet the 2-3x requirements of TM.
Click to expand...
A long time ago (MacOS 9 days) I once reformatted the wrong drive. It didn't actually cost me much, but was quite the pain to recreate. Ever since then, I've been religious about backups. And lost track of how much I've spent on extra drives.

TM usually does fine with 1.5x the space. 2x or more is just ideal, not necessary. Also note it is 1.5x the used space. Since you shouldn't use working drives to high percentages anyway, this means you can get away with your TM drive being the same size as your working drive. You only need bigger drives or arrays for TM, if you backup multiple drives to the same TM drive. Or if you want the luxury of being able to go back as long as you like through years of snapshots.
 
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reader50 said:
DiskWarrior is a good product for HFS+ drives, though we're all getting old waiting for the DW 6 release that can fix APFS drives. I'd let DW do its thing on each problem drive. It will fix all low-level filesystem problems. If you're lucky, it will fix permissions enough to restore operation, though I've never tested DW against your particular problem. You might need these low-level problems fixed before trying Migration Assistant (or an OS reinstall) to prevent an abort during the process.
Click to expand...
Interesting -- you think it's worth trying DiskWarrior on the Mountain Lion drive prior to attempting Migration Assistant? Are you suggesting that an abort in the MA process might actually make the drive's problems worse? Since I know at least one of the problems on the ML disk is the b-tree error, DW does seem like the best first choice.

This seems sensible for the ML disk, but the Mojave disk is APFS, so no use trying DW there.

I'm really at a loss as to what exactly is wrong with the Mojave disk. I know what caused the problem, but I'd love to know what problem exactly I caused. It's just frustrating to not see any remaining permissions or ACL problems, not uncover any problems with fsck, and see it hang at a seemingly random spot in the boot with no errors visible in verbose. Diagnosing the problem may be useless at this point (just need to try to migrate the Mojave drive, I suppose--or attempt reinstall), but I sure would feel some small satisfaction if I could at least understand what was going wrong... Since DW isn't an option on that drive, any suggestions for steps I could take to at least raise the chances of successful MA for the Mojave drive?
 
If you have DW, turn it loose on the ML drive. It won't make anything worse, and might fix enough. About Migration Assistant, it won't do any damage to the source drive. I've occasionally had trouble using MA to import user accounts, but this was through OCLP on Monterey or higher. Never had trouble with it on direct-boot macOS versions that are supported on the hardware.

I'd try the fresh install on another drive, followed by Migration Assistant. The absolute worst that could happen is it doesn't work, wasting a few hours of your time. The original source disk will be unaffected.
 
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Gee whiz I had forgotten about DiskWarrior!!! It fixed a bunch of stuff back in the day! 😂. Definitely worth a try if they're still around.
 
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reader50 said:
If you have DW, turn it loose on the ML drive. It won't make anything worse, and might fix enough. About Migration Assistant, it won't do any damage to the source drive. I've occasionally had trouble using MA to import user accounts, but this was through OCLP on Monterey or higher. Never had trouble with it on direct-boot macOS versions that are supported on the hardware.

I'd try the fresh install on another drive, followed by Migration Assistant. The absolute worst that could happen is it doesn't work, wasting a few hours of your time. The original source disk will be unaffected.
Click to expand...
Well that's what I'm going to do this weekend. Thank you for your help!

1. ML: DW on ML drive, attempt to boot. If no dice, install ML on fresh drive, attempt MA. If that doesn't work (or prevents me from running projects, etc), I'll try a reinstall-in-place. Still crossing fingers I may be able to save the original install.
2. Mojave: fresh install and MA. If that doesn't get me back to a comfortable place, reinstall in-place. Doesn't seem like there's much else to do, since there's no third party tools (or remaining Apple tools) that can do more than I've done already to diagnose the problem.

I do wish there were more calculated specific things I could do to addres whatever the issues are with Mojave. I still imagine there may remaining ACL/permissions problems that recursive fixes haven't resolved, but I can't think of anywhere else obvious to look in the directory structure. But I suppose that short of investigating hundreds of user and Library/system subfolders manually, that may just not be in the cards any longer.

I'll report back for posterity (or more help if outcomes may suggest new avenues to explore). Thanks again.
 
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Flint Ironstag said:
Did you try Batchmod? It will go through every. single. folder. and correct permissions.
Click to expand...
I haven’t, but maybe it’s worth a try on the user folders on the respective drives. I’m just a bit nervous about it because it’s my impression batchmod doesn’t have an option to restore default permissions—it’s all manual, right? Also, it can’t run in recovery, right? I’m worried about making any more changes on the native drive(s) while booted into the OCLP Monterey drive—for fear it’s going to misattribute ownership to the Monterey user/admin—which is why all the chown and chmod work I’ve done thus far has been through terminal on each respective drive’s recovery mode. I also ready about a modern successor app to batchmod called Permissions Reset, which just runs default settings instead of batchmod’s manual settings.
 
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