Boot Disk – Cannot Write to Boot Disk, Asks for Authentication

disk-utilityhard drivemac promacossnow leopard

Problem

Suddenly, after rebooting a Snow Leopard Mac Pro (2009), I cannot copy to the main disk, or even move one of its files, without having Mac OS X asking for authentication.

Once I type the password in the dialog box, the copy is made, but this is not acceptable nor usable in the long term. I even think most apps won't like it…

enter image description here

I'm talking about copying a file from the Desktop to somewhere else on the same disk, the one the system has booted on…!

History

2 x Mac Pro 2009, one has Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard working properly, the second one has nothing.

I used Copy Carbon Cloner to make a clone of the first Mac on another disk then installed the copy in the second machine.

It worked for some time! Then, on this second Mac, I added another disk in bay 3 and things started to go south. I think the disk in bay 3 was faulty.

So I stopped the machine, removed the faulty disk from bay 3, and rebooted. And here the authentication problem on the main disk appeared.

What has been done

I've booted from another system partition on another disk then used Disk Utility to repair the disk and to repair permissions. No errors were detected.

I researched other answers to similar questions but they are all about using an NTFS disk, and this is not my case at all, I'm talking about a standard HFS+ Mac OS X disk that suddenly is in this "read only" mode.

Other info

If I add another disk with Yosemite installed, I can boot on it and I can copy/move/write anything on the Yosemite disk and on the Snow Leopard one.

But I absolutely need to have the Snow Leopard one also working (because of obsolete apps we still need) and rebooting again on it, the problem is still here.

TL;DR

In a 2009 Mac Pro, a cloned Snow Leopard disk asks for authentication for any file operation.

In the same Mac Pro, a Yosemite disk works properly and does not suffer from this issue, I can move files on the Yosemite disk and on the Snow Leopard disk.

Back on the Snow leopard one: the authentication problem is still here, for all disks in the machine.

Result of operations asked in comments

Asked by seaturtle:

cd ~; ls -ale | grep -e '^ [0-9]*:' -B 1 | grep -v '^--$'

drwxr-xr-x@ 15 lollipopmusic  staff    510 17 oct 16:40 .
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@ 30 lollipopmusic  staff   1020 17 oct 16:43 Desktop
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@ 35 lollipopmusic  staff   1190 17 oct 16:10 Documents
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@  5 lollipopmusic  staff    170  1 jui  2010 Downloads
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@ 32 lollipopmusic  staff   1088 24 avr  2012 Library
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@  3 lollipopmusic  staff    102 27 mai  2010 Movies
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@  6 lollipopmusic  staff    204 22 fév  2011 Music
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@  4 lollipopmusic  staff    136 27 mai  2010 Pictures
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x@  5 lollipopmusic  staff    170 27 mai  2010 Public
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x@  5 lollipopmusic  staff    170 27 mai  2010 Sites
 0: group:everyone deny delete

and:

total 32
drwxr-xr-x@ 15 lollipopmusic  staff    510 17 oct 16:40 .
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x@  6 root           admin    204  1 fév  2011 ..
-rw-------@  1 lollipopmusic  staff      5 27 mai  2010 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@  1 lollipopmusic  staff  15364 17 oct 16:11 .DS_Store
drwx------   4 lollipopmusic  staff    136 17 oct 16:43 .Trash
drwx------@ 30 lollipopmusic  staff   1020 17 oct 16:43 Desktop
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@ 35 lollipopmusic  staff   1190 17 oct 16:10 Documents
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@  5 lollipopmusic  staff    170  1 jui  2010 Downloads
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@ 32 lollipopmusic  staff   1088 24 avr  2012 Library
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@  3 lollipopmusic  staff    102 27 mai  2010 Movies
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@  6 lollipopmusic  staff    204 22 fév  2011 Music
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwx------@  4 lollipopmusic  staff    136 27 mai  2010 Pictures
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x@  5 lollipopmusic  staff    170 27 mai  2010 Public
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x   3 lollipopmusic  staff    102 17 oct 16:11 RECUPS
drwxr-xr-x@  5 lollipopmusic  staff    170 27 mai  2010 Sites
 0: group:everyone deny delete

Asked by klanomath:

sudo ls -lae /

drwxrwxr-x@ 30 root           wheel         1088 17 oct 16:43 .
drwxrwxr-x@ 30 root           wheel         1088 17 oct 16:43 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 lollipopmusic  admin        12292 17 oct 17:04 .DS_Store
drwx------@  5 _unknown       _unknown       170 12 oct 15:07 .Spotlight-V100
d-wx-wx-wt@  2 _unknown       _unknown        68 17 oct 17:04 .Trashes
-rw-r--r--@  1 _unknown       _unknown         0 12 oct 15:07 .com.apple.timemachine.donotpresent
----------@  1 root           admin            0  5 oct  2009 .file
drwx------@  8 _unknown       _unknown       272 17 oct 17:04 .fseventsd
-rw-------@  1 root           wheel        65536 12 oct 16:20 .hotfiles.btree
drwxr-xr-x@  2 root           wheel           68 18 mai  2009 .vol
drwxrwxr-x@ 49 root           admin         1666  2 jan  2012 Applications
 0: group:everyone deny delete
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root           admin           60 13 sep  2016 Guides de l’utilisateur et informations -> /Library/Documentation/User Guides and Information.localized
drwxrwxr-t@ 55 root           admin         1870  1 jui  2010 Library
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x@  2 root           wheel           68  5 oct  2009 Network
drwxr-xr-x@  5 root           wheel          170  7 fév  2011 System
drwxr-xr-x@  6 root           admin          204  1 fév  2011 Users
drwxrwxrwt@  5 root           admin          170 17 oct 17:35 Volumes
 0: group:everyone deny add_file,add_subdirectory,directory_inherit,only_inherit
drwxr-xr-x@ 39 root           wheel         1326  4 nov  2009 bin
dr-xr-xr-x   3 root           wheel         4259 17 oct 17:05 dev
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 root           wheel           11 13 sep  2016 etc -> private/etc
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root           wheel            1 17 oct 17:05 home
-rw-r--r--@  1 root           wheel     18676624  4 nov  2009 mach_kernel
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root           wheel            1 17 oct 17:05 net
drwxr-xr-x@  6 root           wheel          204  4 nov  2009 private
drwxr-xr-x@ 64 root           wheel         2176  4 nov  2009 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 root           wheel           11 13 sep  2016 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x@ 11 root           wheel          374 27 mai  2010 usr
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 root           wheel           11 13 sep  2016 var -> private/var

and:

sudo ls -lae ~/  

drwx------@  30 lollipopmusic  staff      1020 17 oct 16:43 .  
 0: group:everyone deny delete  
drwxr-xr-x@  15 lollipopmusic  staff       510 17 oct 16:40 ..  
 0: group:everyone deny delete  

Best Answer

Do this instead:

Open Finder, find your drive, typically named "Macintosh HD"(but in your case "MAC106"), select it, press Command (⌘) + I on your keyboard, in the window that opens, scroll to the bottom, if the text next to your username is "read and write", this isn't the solution, but if the text is "Read Only", do this:

Click the padlock, type your credentials, click the "Read Only" tag next to your username, click on "Read & Write", click on the padlock, and done.