OS X Folders & Files grip!

[SPC]

After deleting the old Admin user and creating a new admin user, I am unable to save to my usual Episodes folder. PT's seems to just save my "save session as" as an alias somewhere outside of my Eps folder. Nor am I able to dump some strange iTunes related stuff that got into that folder. I get a message saying I DO NOT OWN or CAN ONLY BE DELETED BY ROOT USER.

HELP!
SPC

[Chief Technician]

You've got a permissions problem on your hands. It sounds like you need to chown (change owner) and chmod (change permissions) for the folder in question. Try repair permissions in Disk Utility and see if that resolves it. Some programmer out there must have a graphical way of changing permissions. Otherwise, you can launch terminal and do it from there. It's a rather involved process via terminal though.

[KamaSutra77]

I had a similar problem at one time. i ended up just reinstalling osx

Couple of Ideas for the computing inclined:

you can log out and then log in as root, however its easy to mess things up that way.
To log in as root you have to first enable the root user access - a tricky thing, look that up on the web.

You can restart holding down command-S, this boots into a terminal window called the single user mode I think. Form the terminal you can type
"fsck -y" ( which stands for "file system check" the -y = yes to all. and hit return to launch file structure diagnostics.
A prompt will run throgh a routine and come back either disk is ok or changes have been made, if changes made "fsck -y" again till clear. When ok, type reboot to restart.

But first I''d recommend using the disk utility program to repair permissions which almost always finds somethign to repair.

Disc warrior 3 is out and does a decent job of rebuilding damaged directories.

But all that may not help a oddball admin account.

Occasioanly I use a utility app called "unlock all" too. It'll empty the trash when you have locked files in there.

Hope any of that helps.

[lenf]

Suggest you pop out to B&N or Borders and get a copy of Pogue's "OS X The Missing Manual, Jaguar Edition" and read the bits on fixing permissions (and, perhaps, when and how to delete admin accts...grin).

Seriously, it's a great book.

[SPC]

I forgot to mention the CANNOT BE DELETED MESSAGE as well.

I'll will go over all of your suggestions.

Thanks

[SPC]

.... sorry .... I also wanted to say the problems are occurring with the folders and files on my Firewire drives.

Tanx again

[SPC]

Okay.
1- I tried going for the Repair disk permissions but you can only do that to the boot drive (not the firewire drives where the problem is).
2- I tried the fsck -y method and it seems like it just told me my Mac HD is okay.
3- I did the netmanager / root user, log in as root, etc ... Doing that I did get to delete those stray files I had to get rid of, cool. So yes I do have a way of deleting unwanted files that just wont go.

Now I still have a problem that I see more clearly; there are several folder on my firewire drives that have the "pencil with a slash through it". I figure that means I dont have permissions on those folder and can not write to them as well! HOW DO I GET RID OF THAT SLASHED OUT PENCIL ON THOSE FOLDERS? ... is the question. I have elements of very important ProTools sessions that now seem to be getting scattered with regard to where it's putting new Audio Files, session Save As's and new Video files.

Anyone had this problem before (and got out of it)?

[lenf]

According to the very nice Pogue book...

Highlight the folder, then choose File>Get Info. There you can reassign ownership of the folder to your new Admin acct. Make sure your permission is "Read & Write."

[SPC]

Originally posted by lenf:
According to the very nice Pogue book...

Highlight the folder, then choose File>Get Info. There you can reassign ownership of the folder to your new Admin acct. Make sure your permission is "Read & Write."

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Simple enough! You made my day.

Thank you,
spc

P.S. "It's those simple things about being new to working with OS X that kill us".