[kevs]

Becasue of permissions issues and other things can't seem to solve even by creating new user and migrating over, tech at Apple said I should erase main HD and install Tiger. He says he think the whole net info database is screwed and that archive and install wont work.

Only thing is that would be a hellacious amount of work reinstalling all my apps etc, and settings. Any idea on that. Is that what it comes down to? thanks.

[TETENAL]

You didn't have a permission problem to begin with. Reinstalling will not solve the problem. Stop fighting the system will solve it.

If you messed a lot with the system I would suggest you make an Archive & Install with reimporting of your users. That will save you from doing an erase and install and should be just as good.

[jmiddel]

kevs, bear with me as I try to explain this, I have read your previous thread. You are assuming that the rules of private property, such as obtain your house, apply to the computer. In your home you can do anything you want with your stuff as long as does not endanger others, even if you decide to take a bat to your computer. OSX and it Unix foundation is more like a parent. It assumes that you, the user, are profoundly ignorant of the complex system that makes the computer tick, so it prohibits you from touching things that might create problems and havoc. In your parents' house, there were things you were not allowed to touch as a toddler, and places that were off limits. The HD from which your computer is booted is like that, you can only go to certain rooms, like 'user', 'applications' 'documents' etc, but you cannot go into the 'system' etc and modify things. Therefore, the HD as a whole is not accessible, but you can have access to certain parts of it.
All of this I had to learn going from OS9 and before to OSX. Best wishes.

[analogika]

If that doesn't help, think of the permissions and password stuff like the door and ignition locks on your car.

They're not there to annoy you or to make your life difficult; they're there to make sure that YOU are the only one doing stuff only you should be able to do, i.e. drive.

They're necessary inconveniences that you get used to.

If you're coming from OS 9, you may justifiably wonder why you never needed them before. The answer is simple: Mac OS 9 and before were so profoundly impotent in so many ways that there was no interest from any malicious programmers to break into your system: they couldn't actually *do* anything in there, anyway. This may seem like a good thing, but it also meant that the system was fundamentally incapable of doing a lot of things that simply MUST be expected of any computer operating system: like connecting to the internet, which OS 9 was only barely capable of by virtue of clunky bolted-on solutions (Remote Access, MacPoEt, etc.), for just ONE example.

OS X is an entirely different animal. It can do all these things. It is an internet server. It is a mail server. It is just about everything a modern operating system can be, and not just wrt networking. But the networking stuff is fairly central to why you have to deal with these inconveniences:

The problem is that, if you can do these things on your machine, then ANYBODY posing as you can do these things on your machine. Without a security concept including authentication/authorization, there is very little to stop ANYBODY from turning your computer into a mailing relay for millions of spam e-mails, or into a child-porn server for an underground trading network, or a server for pirated software, or just using it and 15,000 other machines for a simultaneous attack on the Pentagon servers.

Without you even noticing.

And before you dismiss that as being unlikely, that is EXACTLY what is happening to thousands of hapless Windows users EVERY DAY. That is the primary motivation behind all those Windows viruses and worms that you read about every other week.


The ownership thing is part of that. That just basically defines what is whose realm. Put in Unix terms, my mechanic "owns" the engine compartment of my car, though I have permission to inspect stuff I know to inspect, and I can fill up the one or other fluid - though, being a fairly clueless car user, I usually have to check the manual for the exact oil code or coolant/water mixture, for example, and of course I need to unscrew the caps on those tanks first.

-s*

[kevs]

Great great replies, guys. terrific, leanrning a lot about this.

In a quick nutshell, after I installed Tiger, two things started happeing bit weird. First spelling stopped working in Safari and text edit. I called Apple. We created a new user and migrated everything over and problem was solved. But it's come back, and then gone away again. and back and away...

Also, log in items vanish intermittinalty.

And just recently, seems I can't change permission of certian folders of a certain backup FW HD.

I just started doing backup clones from one external FW HD to another, and it seems on the backup clone, there are some folders that I cannot change permissions no matter what. (Could it be the fault of the back up software?? (retrospect)

So anyway, the Apple guy says that he think my net info data thing (I'm not too knowegable on this) is bad, and I need a full erase and install --

But the work that would involve......whew.
I think I'll live with what's going on, as TETENAL, says as see how it plays out.... but:
what do folks think of the Apple guys analysis about net info data etc....