Highlight the folder in question, file --> Get Info --> Sharing & Permissions --> Unlock --> Set permissions to give you ownership --> Click on Gear, select Apply to Enclosed items.
Sorry, misread the question.... It's a permissions issue, but what your really asking is how to merge two different Time Machine Backup stores.
You really can't merge them... Time Machine considers each install to be a different machine, which is why your running into an issue. For example, your first install isn't snow leopard... So why would you want your Snow Leopard OS files to be equated with your non-Snow Leopard files...? At least that's part of the reason that Apple has designed it this way...
I think I know what has happened, but I'm not sure the best way to resolve it.
You originally had a single partition, which contained leopard, and your user account? You then shrunk the Leopard partition, and made a second partition for Snow Leopard? Installed Snow leopard, and then restored from backup with the target being Snow Leopard's partition?
Did you do a User Migration with restore? Or a Snow Leopard install with Time Machine restore? I suspect a SL Install w/restore...
I suspect that the user account in Leopard is a different user ID than your SL user account (eg 501 vs 503). Can you check? System Preferences --> Accounts -> Right Click on Account --> Advanced -> What is the User ID on Snow Leopard? And on Leopard?
That would explain your permissions issue. If you haven't done much in Snow Leopard, I would suggest creating a temporary Admin account, deleting your current user, and then using the User Migration tool to bring your old user account over from the Leopard partition... Seamless, and should do exactly what you want...
I know you can do it manually, but since your user account already exists, I don't know what impact it would have in manually correcting the user id, etc, in Snow Leopard...
Best Answer
AFAIK there is no means of just restoring individual applications. However, thanks to the way OS X handles application data and settings, you should have no problems restoring the applications yourself. There's no real magic behind it.
I don't know if there are any known issues between OS X 10.6 and 10.7, which could lead to unexpected behavior. Especially for the preference files (
plist
), if there are any problems, just trash them on your 10.7 machine, and they will be restored to their default when the application is restarted.Another neat trick you should remember for iPhoto or iTunes is that when you hold option and click the application's icon in the Dock, it will present you a dialog which allows you to choose a library.
How can I recover …
… iTunes?
~/Music/iTunes
. Just restore this folder.~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.plist
to get your application settings.For more information, see here: Migrate iTunes Library with meta-data to a new machine
… iPhoto?
~/Photos/iPhoto Library
. Restore the whole folder.~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPhoto.plist
to get your application settings.More details in this answer: How do I back up iPhoto library to external HDD without using Time Machine
… Mail?
~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
See here for more details: How do I move saved Mail.app mail from one machine to another?
… iCal?
This depends on the type of calendar you used, but I guess it should be enough to:
~/Library/Calendars
for all your calendar data.Calendar Cache
file while iCal is quit (suggested here).~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist
for your preferences.If you have trouble and still have access to the old system, you can also do the following:
See How to back up iCal calendar data for more info.
… Keychain?
~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain
~/Library/Keychains
… any other application?
Most applications that don't require an extra installer (i.e. the thing with dialogs) usually only need the following data to be restored:
/Applications
~/Library/Preferences/<bundle-identifier>
.~/Library/Application Support
. This is for example where Chrome and Firefox store their profile, Cyberduck stores its bookmarks, etc.~/Documents
. This is where some apps store data, even if they really shouldn't.~/.
. Use Terminal.app and runls -la ~
to list them. Useopen ~/.something
to open it.