[swimp]

A weird thing has happened to me, Finder simply flat out refuses to copy anything of my backup CD's.. At first I thought it was just something wacky with one of them but it refuses to copy anything from *any* cd. I've tried repairing permissions but it still doensn't work.

Any ideas?

update: managed to doubleclick a zip file, which unzipped it to my Downloads-folder.. but I can't move *that* folder anywhere or any of the files it contains.. what kind of poltergeist is this mucking about!?*

update 2: seems I can't move or copy things from my other internal disc!? this smells like permissions, doens't it?? My normal startup disk can copy/move files from folder to folder, but my extra disk won't even let me move files to another folder on the same disk anymore?? It's worth noting that I've just completely reinstalled Mac OS X from a system crash.. is my extra drive getting ill here? .. Still can't copy from Cd's to my startup disk or my extra disk!

update 3: hmm, it aparently appears when i insert "older" cd's... any of the ones i've burned recently works like normal, but whenever i insert one of the ones from 2004 it makes the computer weird, and even if the cd is ejected it doens't allow copying between disks, until you restart or relogin.. weird

[Watson]

You should inspect the Ownership and Permissions to see what user and group are allocated on a file or folder in your home directory, say "Library" for example. Depending upon what version of OS X you have, it should be your username for both (for newer systems), or your username and "staff" (for older systems).

Check the ownership on the other, and check whether or not "Ignore ownership on this volume" is listed under "Finder->File->Get Info". If the group differs, or if "Ignore..." is checked, you may have problems. Also, if your user id (501 is the default) has changed after the reinstall, you may have trouble.

But at least now you have a starting point!

[swimp]

Thanks.. so the Ignore ownership on this volume checkbox should *not* be checked??

[Watson]

It won't hurt to try it out. You can always re-check it later if it doesn't help. I had problems archiving my 10.3.x boot volume during pre-upgrade backups prior to installing Tiger. I would create an Apple Software Restore (asr) disk image and then when I rebooted, the "ignore ownership on this volume" would be "checked", which would limit my ability to restore my old setup in case of a failed upgrade. I had to create the image, mount it, uncheck "ignore permissions" on the mounted disk image, save the image, then flatten it before I got a workable backup.

Needless to say, I had much frustration with this. I hope that this is all there is to your situation.

Again, you must check your permissions in your current setup to see what the correct owner/group should be. If the group differs on the old files, you may not be able to remedy the problem until changing the group associations. Tiger in particular uses a new method of Access Control Lists, which allows for a much more fine grained control of permissions than previous versions of the operating system.

So lets say for instance that you have an internal disk with lots of files from an older version of the system. And then you performed a clean install of Tiger (versus Upgrade install) onto another disk. When you are logged onto the "clean" Tiger system, your user/groups will be yourusername:yourusername by default. Not so on the older drive. So the "group" limitations on those older files may limit your ability to make changes to those files, while you may have no problem opening them, or saving them with a new name to someplace on your "new" disk.

This can also work in reverse if you boot up onto the older volume and try to use files on the "new" system.