Fixing/Correcting OS X home folder file permissions

Question

Long story short, I managed to muck up the file permissions within my home directory in OS X (Lion). While I'm familiar enough with linux file permissions and more than comfortable changing them, I am unable to get the right combination of permissions and/or commands to change them appropriately.

Before I continue however, I must mention that I have a slightly different setup to a standard install. My hard drive is partitioned into two drives, System and User.

My home folder is located at in Users/[username] on the User drive, ie. when both drives are correctly mounted, it is accessible at /Volumes/User/Users/[username]. In /User/, I have a symlink [username] which points to //Volumes/User/Users/[username] and this has worked just as I wanted.

I tried the following two articles found here and here only t myself locked out of my own home directory. In the meantime I changed them to full global access so that I can use them but I would like to get around to fixing that.

Answer 1

First, make sure you own your home folder (note: I'm assuming you're running this from your own user account, and that you're an admin):

sudo chown -R $USER:staff ~

Then, give yourself proper access and nobody else any access (we'll make some exceptions later). Note that this is 2 commands to make sure that execute access gets added to the directories, but not plain files:

chmod -R 600 ~
chmod -R u+rwX ~

Now, grant read access to others for the directories they're supposed to have access to. If you don't have a sites folder, you can leave that off the second command:

chmod og+rX ~
chmod -R og+rX ~/Public ~/Sites

Apple likes to have access control entries to keep you from messing with "important" parts of your home folder. Again, if you don't have Sites you can leave that off (do not leave out Library; it's invisible, but it's there):

chmod +a "group:everyone deny delete" ~ ~/Desktop ~/Documents ~/Downloads ~/Library ~/Movies ~/Music ~/Pictures ~/Public ~/Sites

Finally, fix your Drop Box:

chmod og=wX ~/Public/Drop\ Box
chmod +a "user:$USER allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,file_inherit,directory_inherit" ~/Public/Drop\ Box

Note that this procedure will not properly "fix" the permissions on files inside your various folders, but that doesn't really matter since it gives you full access to them and nobody else can get into the folders anyway...

Answer 2

To Reset file permissions and Access Control Lists (ACLs) of your user's home directory to their default settings do this:

1. Boot into the Recovery mode by holding down the Command and R keys during boot.
2. Open the terminal (under the Utilities menu)
3. Type resetpassword into the terminal and hit Return.
4. In the Reset Password utility window choose the correct volume, and on the bottom you’ll see an area labeled ‘Reset Home Folder Permissions and ACLs’. Click the Reset button in that area.
5. Close windows, quick OS X Utilities, restart.

Answer 3

Repair Disk Permissions by opening Disk Utility, selecting the drive, then clicking Repair Disk Permissions

Answer 4

After much effort and searching:

While not perfect, I just used the Get Info window on the home folder. It showed "read/write" for the user,* "read only" for admin, and "no access" for everyone. Looked good enough to me.

I then ran the option in the gear menu to apply to all enclosed items.

Restored access to everything! Less than a minute (on my SSD).

Hallelujah! *standard, not admin

Answer 5

Run this

cd $HOME
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; \
sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; \
sudo chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; \
sudo chmod -R 755 ~ $_ ; \
sudo chmod 700 Desktop Documents Downloads Dropbox Library Movies Music Pictures Sites $_ ; \
sudo chmod 777 Public ; \
sudo chmod 733 Public/Drop\ Box ; \
} 2> /dev/null