WORKING ON YOUR NEW MAC
I am glad that you passed along your info, re Apple Support trying to help you. Because, I did not know that you were still having trouble accessing your work on the new Mac.
Out-of-the-box, Apple computers are issued with a variety of access restrictions that are intended to protect your computer and you.
To the point, in your regard, there are THREE forms, or methods, of access permissions governance:
(1) Sort of a reservoir, not accessible by you, where Apple Mac OS keeps what we might call, Permissions Templates. For certain situations, when the Mac OS might (or believes it must) establish certain permissions for access and / or use of things, DESPITE YOUR EFFORTS to gain access and work without the Mac OS frustrating your access.
For example, an instance of when you might become aware of (1), here, in play: Upon Restarting the Mac, sometimes you will be prompted to OK a fix of permissions (though not so-worded in the dialog box that popped up). Another example would be, when you really mess up (or something is really messed up) and the Mac OS thinks that it must engage (1), here, to try and fix enough of the access situation, in order to at least get the Mac up and running.
(2) Access Control Lists (ACL and ACE for Access Control Entries). These lists and entries have greater rank over file and folder permissions that are POSIX read, write, execute (rwx, 700; rw- 600; etc.) -type of permissions settings.
(3) POSIX read, write, execute file permissions settings – with which, you have been gaining experience.
Now, there are plenty of experts who would re-explain all of my brief explanation, using other, and many more [and some, stern] words.
But here, I mention all three (1)/(2)/(3) access restriction methods, because some understanding needs to be made, that (1) and (2) have greater rank over (3). And, both (1) and (2) are the likely opponents that are frustrating your new Mac and you.
You may get a contact at Apple, who is understanding and tells you, “This is what we are supposed to do . . .” but that contact guides you thru some commands that lift away the weight of a bit of (1) and all of (2).
Or with experience and learning about POSIX file permissions settings – that you have been learning – YOU might uh . . . establish some freedom.
In a nutshell, the following 2 commands plus the Restart, would do it:
sudo chflags -R nouchg /Users/[username]/
sudo chmod -R -N /Users/[username]/
Restart the new Mac
Upon the Restart, you might be prompted to OK some fix; do that. (If so, then the Mac OS noticed something re access restriction methods of (1) and will apply a necessary fix.)
The 3 terminal window commands will relieve you of a few of (1), all of (2), and leave (3) the POSIX file permissions (the rwx stuff), intact.
But that is a big step; and YOUR decision to take, or not, AFTER you have settled things with Apple Support (who may have fixed things, today?).
Meanwhile, what I wrote overnight, is a very focused set of commands, so that ONLY (for now) the Keychains
~/Library/Keychains/
. . . folder on your new Mac, gets the aforementioned freedom, along with an arrangement of POSIX file permissions that existed, and work well, for the Keychains folder out-of-the-box re Mac OS “Sierra” computers and earlier.
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Need to fix some file and folder permissions.
Quit all applications.
Be sure to back up all your data on your new Mac. Including the Keychains folder.
Backup software:
Schedule GoodSync backups:
Schedule WinZip backups:
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READ CAREFULLY about “the-long-character-string-folder-name”
After completing your backups, use the Finder on your new Mac, and navigate to the Keychains folder
~/Library/Keychains/
and open that Keychains folder. Set the Finder menu bar > View menu selection to “List As”.
Inside that Keychains folder, there is a directory (folder) with a long name, roughly similar to (an example):
PNIU37-O8OBG-GQG34-QG34-A-SFBSHOUYVE
and four files:
login.keychain
login.keychain-db
metadata.keychain
metadata.keychain-db
You will soon be using the actual folder name, in a terminal window command.
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The following Terminal.app window commands, will set the file and folder permissions for your Keychains folder and certain contents:
~/Library/Keychains/
to what works on my Mac OS “Sierra” machine and should also work for your new Mac.
For the first command, you need to use the folder name that you actually found earlier:
ztstF=“the-long-character-string-folder-name” (including the quotes)
sudo chflags -R nouchg ~/Library/Keychains 2> /dev/null
sudo chmod -R -N ~/Library/Keychains 2> /dev/null
sudo chmod -R 600 ~/Library/Keychains/“$ztstF” 2> /dev/null (including the quotes)
sudo chmod 700 ~/Library/Keychains/“$ztstF” 2> /dev/null
sudo chmod 644 ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain 2> /dev/null
sudo chmod 644 ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain-db 2> /dev/null
sudo chmod 600 ~/Library/Keychains/metadata.keychain 2> /dev/null
sudo chmod 600 ~/Library/Keychains/metadata.keychain-db 2> /dev/null
sudo chmod 755 ~/Library/Keychains 2> /dev/null
sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~/Library/Keychains 2> /dev/null
Those commands should appear as
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The result should appear as follows, for the visible items that you found earlier, using the Finder (I entered the example name for the long-named-folder):
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Quit any applications that you might have opened, and Restart your Mac.
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