[Frost]

Okay, I'm stumped. I can't access anything on my G4 over the network because I "don't have sufficient access priviliges."

Not only that, but I can't fix it by going over to my G4 and changing privileges, because when I change myself to the owner of a drive and do "apply to enclosed items" it tells me I don't have sufficient privileges. I don't have sufficient privilieges? I'm the administrator you motherfire trucker, what the hell else do I have to be?

So, I effectively can no longer copy anything over the network, I have to put it on a disk or flash drive and carry it over. What the hell. I did permissions repair but that accomplished nothing, problem's still there. Is there some kind of program or terminal trick or something I can use to unfire truck my computer's privileges? Moreover, any idea what the hell might have caused this? Only thing I can think of is I created a second user, but I don't see why that should screw up the privileges on the entire computer so that God himself apparently wouldn't have sufficient access privileges to satisfy OSX.

For popsnizzle's sake.

Currently running 10.4.11.

[Janichsan]

Frost, on February 19th 2009, 10:36 PM, said:

I'm the administrator you motherfire trucker, what the hell else do I have to be?

Root.

However, it's quite easily possible to lock out users with administration privileges or even the root user, mainly by excluding certain user groups from access. Admin users under MacOS X are all in the "wheel" group, which has quite a lot privileges but not universal ones.

That doesn't necessarily mean that's the cause of your problems – especially since you usually have to actively mess up the user rights to achieve something like this. Another reason, that often results in the same error message you get, could simply be the firewall settings.

[Frost]

Firewall was the first thing I thought of, so I turned that off. No good.

I did change a few folders on one disk of the computer so I'm the only one with access to them as they contain data to a project that I don't want leaking out (since the G4 occasionally serves as a file server and not only to me), but none of those folders have anything to do with the areas I'm trying to copy stuff to aside from residing on the same disk, and they were only on one disk; this problem is spanning all three.

I'm really at a loss for how the heck I managed to cause this. Aside from creating another user and modifying a handful of folders, that's all I've done. And that was all done a month ago... the problem I only just noticed today. I didn't have any issues copying files only a few days ago.



UPDATE: Well, I booted up from my emergency system folder on one of the other drives and everything works fine again when I start up from there. Maybe time to nuke the startup drive's system folder and start over. If I elect to preserve the users and network settings, will that carry the FUBARness over to the fresh install?

[teflon]

I hate permissions outside of the home folder. Other users cant write to folders/drives youve created etc.etc.

anyway, part of the reason why you cant blanket permission change on a drive could be because it contains a bunch of system files and folders (if its your boot drive) which the system wont allow you to change. So try just changing the permissions of the drive, and then go a layer in and repeat for applications, any other folders (excluding home) and have it change permissions for the contents too. Then go to your home folder and do it to everything but the library and anything stupidly saved in documents...

of course, try to see if its helped before youve done everything (so between doing the app folder and home folder)..

aside from that I havent a clue Im afraid. Im not so great a fixing things via proxy unless ive had the exact same symptoms.

[Frost]

teflon, on February 19th 2009, 04:37 PM, said:

anyway, part of the reason why you cant blanket permission change on a drive could be because it contains a bunch of system files and folders (if its your boot drive) which the system wont allow you to change.

Yeah, I know that. My brain was in AngryAtNonworkingpopsnizzle mode and I didn't think of that. Durr.

teflon, on February 19th 2009, 04:37 PM, said:

So try just changing the permissions of the drive, and then go a layer in and repeat for applications, any other folders (excluding home) and have it change permissions for the contents too. Then go to your home folder and do it to everything but the library and anything stupidly saved in documents...

Did that... even to the most innocuous of folders, when I do apply to enclosed items, it starts doing it, then tells me I don't have permission to change permissions for some items. Whatever.

As I said in the post above, when I fired up the computer from another system folder on another disk, everything magically works again. I guess something got screwed up in the system, though I haven't the foggiest idea how.

[teflon]

oh right, didnt spot that.

well you should backup the user folder (obviously), and you could try and import the user back in and start the network settings from scratch. If that still doesnt work (though I reckon it should), then nuke the user account too.

you could also try re-applying the 10.4.11 patch through combo, that might work out the kink...