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How To Repair User Permissions In Mac OS X

I'm in the process of setting-up a new Apple MacBook Pro today, and during the process of trying to import and get some old SSH keys working correctly I accidently changed the permissions on my home directory. Even after scrolling back through the commands I used I'm still not even sure how it happened, but nonetheless I had to find a way to fix it.

Anyhow there are several symptoms you'll see if the permissions are wrong in your user folder such as:

  • If you're browsing to your home folder using Finder and get a message like 'The folder "username" could not be opened because you do not have sufficent access privileges'
  • When trying to access your home folder in a terminal, you keep getting redirected back to /

Basically if you can't access your home directory in Mac OS X, this blog entry is for you. There is a "repair permissions" utility in OS X but it does not repair permissions for user directories, so you have to take care of it manually.

To repair a specific users permissions in Apple OS X, type the following command in a terminal and replace "username" in the command below with the name of the users permissions you need to fix:

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. $ sudo chmod -R ug+rwX /Users/username

You'll need to reboot so that Finder will pick-up the permission changes, but that should clear-up any user specific permission problems if you are locked out of your home directory.

Posted in Culture, OS X, Operating Systems, Tips, Hacks, & Tricks. Tagged with , , , , , .

By Brandon Harper
July 2, 2007

8 Responses

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  1. Rob Wilkerson said
    on July 6, 2007

    sudo is good. And handy as hell. I've used the Repair Permissions utility several times, but never realized that it didn't touch user directories. That info may serve me well in the future...

  2. Jennifer Rodgers said
    on July 13, 2007

    This did not work for me at all...is there anything else that I can do?

  3. sal said
    on July 31, 2007

    @ Jennifer,

    perhaps try repairing permissions in octal.


    sudo chmod -R 770 /Users/username

    ahh the beauty of OS X...

    cheers

  4. Jared James said
    on August 10, 2007

    THANK YOU. If I weren't a guy I'd kiss you, but an internet high-five will have to do.

    I ended up doing same thing.. changed the permissions on my home folder in the term (don't know why I did that?). This fixed it up!

    Oh, and btw, you actually don't have to restart your Mac to get this to work. You can just "relaunch" the Finder. It'll recognize the changes after that.

  5. matt said
    on July 15, 2008

    my problem is that i need to fix an application's permissions. how would i do that in the terminal?

  6. Clayton said
    on August 9, 2008

    Yo I Have 2 things to Speed up this

    First Since OS X is Fully Unix Based, it knows ~ is your home dir. In Short The Command Used to Be Completely Safe is:
    sudo chmod -R ug+rwX ~

    And @Matt What App is It? There are Some Apps That Must Be System Owned Which is a Little Harder to do!
    thanks

  7. ethicalhacker said
    on October 23, 2008

    So, in summary:

    sudo chmod -R 770 ~

Continuing the Discussion

  1. saving to HD after firewire transfer from old iMac - MacNN Forums linked to this post on August 13, 2007

    [...] Originally Posted by rsharma  However, I am need to give my password before it allows me to proceed, to verify I am an administrator. Also, it seems that a lot of the files I transfered are now 'read only'. Is there anyone that could shed some light on the topic and help me fix it. This is the same problem. Permissions are incorrect. Easiest solutions require using the terminal though. First, make sure you have a backup user account with admin privileges. Then try: sudo chown -R username /Users/username Here username is your short user name, the name of the folder in the Users directory of the hard disk. It will ask you for your password in order to do this. Then log out and log back in. If that doesn't work, these instructions should apply. [...]

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