MacOS – Can’t change kext file ownership from _unknown to root

kernel-extensionskernel-panicmacospermission

I use Lion 10.7.2 and while I was trying to make Bluetooth kext work, I removed a kext named IOHIDFamily.kext from /System/Library/Extensions (SLE) folder but this gave a kernel panic so I copied it back to SLE. However after copying, it kept on giving kernel panic and I noticed that it had owner information like _unknown:_unknown Thinking that it was this false ownership causing the kernel panic

I tried:

# chown -R root:wheel IOHIDFamily.kext

but it doesn't change the ownership neither does it return any error message. I've tried to chown using an app called Path Finder 7 but it didn't even have an option to chown or I couldn't manage to find one.

How can I solve this problem? Thank you.

Best Answer

You might try running the chown command on the whole /System/Library/Extensions/ directory from single-user-mode (hold Command-S on boot, or use -s as a bootflag if using Clover/Enoch/Chameleon), or doing the same thing from the Terminal app in your recovery partition. Also make sure you include su or sudo in front of the command, or are logged in to a fully root shell before doing so.

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