Permissions screwed after TM restore

[miles01110]

Hi,

I recently used Migration Assistant to make my new machine like my old one via TM. Now, all the permissions on more or less everything are messed up, and I can't change anything without going into Get Info and adding myself. I do not want to do this every single time I want to update an Application, for example.

How do I do this "globally"- give my administrator account Read/Write permission for all of the normal things?

So far I have tried this:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/693452/

Which did not work and returned this error:

$ sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
sudo: can't open /private/etc/sudoers: Permission denied

I tried this:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1617604

which resulted in this:

$ sudo chown -R miles:staff /Users/miles
sudo: can't open /private/etc/sudoers: Permission denied

Why am I being denied permission using sudo? It doesn't even prompt me for my password. Any help fixing this via links I missed or alternative suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

edit: and now after restarting, I get stuck on the blue loading screen. Excellent...

 

[miles01110]

Last night I restored from a CCC Backup and the machine started up fine and functioned normally. I shut it down and this morning tried to start it back up.

This time it gets stuck on the gray apple screen with the scrolling circle. After a couple of minutes it automatically restarts itself. I still can't boot from the DVD (it freezes) and now I can't even boot from my backup. What the hell is going on here? Can't boot to safe mode, SMC reset didn't help. I have a Genius Bar appt. tomorrow but would like to get it working in the mean time.