I ran the following command by mistake:
sudo chmod 744 ~/..
and I can't boot my macbook anymore, it freezes with the brown screen and ajax-style spin. What should I do to make it work normally again?
I tried:
a) Disk utility (repair permissions) – didn't help
b) resetpassword -> reset ACL and permissions for home directory – didn't help.
I booted in the recovery mode, opened the terminal and went to "/Volumes/Macintosh HD". Yes, this was the disk (or should I say "path") I changed the permissions for.
How do I restore them now? And what are they were?
UPDATE:
I was able to restore it by going to the terminal in recovery mode and performing:
chmod 777 "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/"
But I believe that 777
is too much. What's the default umask for ~/..
?
UPDATE2:
I don't know why it worked since ~/..
means /Users
, not /
.
Best Answer
I would do two things to restore a Mac in this situation.
The installer log can be read in recovery mode boot if step 2 doesn't fix things and we can perhaps refine exactly what directory or directories are now messed up. There is a chance that you had a separate failure and your
chmod
was coincidental to the issue as opposed to causative.