mkdir : permission denied?!?

[CountBrass]

mkdir foo in my home directory throws up a 'permission denied'.

I've checked permissions ls -l

drwx------+ 22 Edward staff 748 7 Sep 11:02 Edward

And looks fine. I even did an explicit chmod 700 on it, made no difference. Tried changing the permissions from Finder->Info, also makes no difference.

I've run disk utility to check permissions and that found some problems but none in my home directory.

I've patched OSX to 10.5.8 and re-booted.

None of this makes any difference and I have no idea what else to try.

Oh, yes I can run mkdir to create directories elsewhere, so the problem isn't that I lack execute permissions on mkdir.

At my wits end- help!

 

[LPZ]

mkdir foo in my home directory throws up a 'permission denied'.

I've checked permissions ls -l

drwx------+ 22 Edward staff 748 7 Sep 11:02 Edward

And looks fine. I even did an explicit chmod 700 on it, made no difference. Tried changing the permissions from Finder->Info, also makes no difference.

I've run disk utility to check permissions and that found some problems but none in my home directory.

I've patched OSX to 10.5.8 and re-booted.

None of this makes any difference and I have no idea what else to try.

Oh, yes I can run mkdir to create directories elsewhere, so the problem isn't that I lack execute permissions on mkdir.

At my wits end- help!

What output do you get if you invoke the following:

cd /Users; ls -le

 

[angelwatt]

Not that sudo should be needed, but what happens when you,

sudo mkdir foo

 

[sidewinder]

First, issue this command in terminal:

$ whoami

What do you get back?

If you get "Edward", issue this command:

sudo chmod 755 /Users/Edward

The try:

mkdir foo

S-

 

[LPZ]

drwx------+ 22 Edward staff 748 7 Sep 11:02 Edward

The + indicates that the Edward directory has extended security information. Invoking

ls -le

in /Users should print the Access Control List (ACL) associated with the Edward directory. It is possible that "deny add_subdirectory" is present in that ACL. It would be good to see the ACL before using chmod.

 

[CountBrass]

First, issue this command in terminal:

$ whoami

What do you get back?

If you get "Edward", issue this command:

sudo chmod 755 /Users/Edward

The try:

mkdir foo

S-

Yup done that (chmod 700 is the same as 755 for these purposes: rx permissions for other people don't make any difference). Weird one huh?

 

[CountBrass]

Not that sudo should be needed, but what happens when you,

sudo mkdir foo

That works but then the created directory belongs to root which doesn't help much.

 

[CountBrass]

What output do you get if you invoke the following:

cd /Users; ls -le

Ouch. It says that everyone is denied permission to do anything!

Is this a new 'feature' in Snow Leopard?

 

[CountBrass]

drwx------+ 22 Edward staff 748 7 Sep 11:02 Edward

The + indicates that the Edward directory has extended security information. Invoking

ls -le

in /Users should print the Access Control List (ACL) associated with the Edward directory. It is possible that "deny add_subdirectory" is present in that ACL. It would be good to see the ACL before using chmod.

Indeed it does. How did that happen and how do I turn this **** off?

Answer: run this command from my home directory: sudo chmod -R -a# 0 .

I think in the medium term though I should simply re-install from scratch: there's something badly fubar if I'm getting ACLs appearing from nowhere. Just have to get the Superdrive back from my Sister-In-Law...

 

[LPZ]

Ouch. It says that everyone is denied permission to do anything!

Is this a new 'feature' in Snow Leopard?

No, something is (as you wrote) FUBAR.