A question of permissions?
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A question of permissions?
Mrs. C has a MacBook Air running OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks since new in January 2014. After being unwrapped it was set up for one user named USER, who of course was an administrator. Sophos antivirus was installed. Backups have been made by clicking on the Macintosh HD icon, opening the Users folder and then dragging the icon for USER to the desktop image of a portable hard drive. All worked fine until mid-2016. Then two things changed.
Up until then asking Sophos to Scan this Mac resulted in all 745,000 odd files being scanned. After this such scans always stop when there are still about 152,000 files to be scanned. Sophos support is unable to pinpoint the cause but suggests it might have something to do with permissions or exclusions.
Up until this point dragging the USER icon to the portable hard drive image resulted in the computer counting up the number of files to be copied and then making a copy of USER on the portable hard drive. After this point dragging the icon USER results in the MBA counting up the number of files to be copied and then a window opens with the advice:
You may have to enter the name and password for an administrator on this computer to change the item named “USER”
(USER is an administrator and is the only user on the MBA, but still is being asked to enter the name and password for an administrator. As far as I know USER is not being changed but is simply being copied to the portable hard drive.)
Clicking on Continue then opens another window with:
Finder wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this.
The name USER is already in place in this second window, so entering the password and clicking OK results in the folder USER being copied to the portable hard drive.
Clearly the only user on this MBA, who is an Administrator, does not now have the same access as before. Something has changed. I believe I am the unwitting culprit for this.
At about the time of these changes I read a security article that one should not access the Internet using an administrator account. I created a second user account named TWO on the MBA. It was created as a Standard account. It did not have access to the same applications, folders and documents that USER had. To try and solve this I changed TWO to become an administrator. I then changed USER from administrator to a standard account. These changes were of no help.
I decided to reverse the changes so made USER an administrator again and then deleted TWO. USER then reverted to being the only account on the MBA. It was some time later that I realised that my user account changes were probably the reason for the MBA’s behaviour changes and that something had not been corrected.
I now have two items I will appreciate some help with:
First, what changes and where do I need to make them to restore USER to the full administrator access that it had when the MBA was new?
Second, after the first is solved, how do I create a second (standard) account for Internet access that has access to all the applications, folders and documents that USER has?
Up until then asking Sophos to Scan this Mac resulted in all 745,000 odd files being scanned. After this such scans always stop when there are still about 152,000 files to be scanned. Sophos support is unable to pinpoint the cause but suggests it might have something to do with permissions or exclusions.
Up until this point dragging the USER icon to the portable hard drive image resulted in the computer counting up the number of files to be copied and then making a copy of USER on the portable hard drive. After this point dragging the icon USER results in the MBA counting up the number of files to be copied and then a window opens with the advice:
You may have to enter the name and password for an administrator on this computer to change the item named “USER”
(USER is an administrator and is the only user on the MBA, but still is being asked to enter the name and password for an administrator. As far as I know USER is not being changed but is simply being copied to the portable hard drive.)
Clicking on Continue then opens another window with:
Finder wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this.
The name USER is already in place in this second window, so entering the password and clicking OK results in the folder USER being copied to the portable hard drive.
Clearly the only user on this MBA, who is an Administrator, does not now have the same access as before. Something has changed. I believe I am the unwitting culprit for this.
At about the time of these changes I read a security article that one should not access the Internet using an administrator account. I created a second user account named TWO on the MBA. It was created as a Standard account. It did not have access to the same applications, folders and documents that USER had. To try and solve this I changed TWO to become an administrator. I then changed USER from administrator to a standard account. These changes were of no help.
I decided to reverse the changes so made USER an administrator again and then deleted TWO. USER then reverted to being the only account on the MBA. It was some time later that I realised that my user account changes were probably the reason for the MBA’s behaviour changes and that something had not been corrected.
I now have two items I will appreciate some help with:
First, what changes and where do I need to make them to restore USER to the full administrator access that it had when the MBA was new?
Second, after the first is solved, how do I create a second (standard) account for Internet access that has access to all the applications, folders and documents that USER has?
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I do not have a MacBook air, I do have an iMac running macOS High Sierra, I can only offer two suggestions.
My iMac has Time Machine as it's 'routine' backup facility. Does the MacBook have a similar facility and can you use it to revert the MacBook to time before you made these changes?
Secondly, the Apple support chat facility is truly exceptional. You can echat to them, you can ring them or they can ring you (and they will ring you 24/7 - no doubt about it). If no one here can help you I thoroughly advise using their support operation.
My iMac has Time Machine as it's 'routine' backup facility. Does the MacBook have a similar facility and can you use it to revert the MacBook to time before you made these changes?
Secondly, the Apple support chat facility is truly exceptional. You can echat to them, you can ring them or they can ring you (and they will ring you 24/7 - no doubt about it). If no one here can help you I thoroughly advise using their support operation.
Firstly, your backup solution is somewhat unusual. The recommended method is using Time Machine, or either Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to make bootable clones. Time Machine has the advantage of making access to the backed up files easy should you find that you have deleted something by mistake. With CCC and SD, you can boot your Mac from them should your internal drive fail.
Second, you really don't need an antivirus app. There are no viruses for Macs out there and you can be sure that when the first one appears it will be all over the news.
Yes, that may well be the case.
To be honest, I couldn't say. You may have to do a reinstall and start again.
You can't. A Standard account has access to the main Applications Folder(same as an Admin account), but can only access folders and documents in it's own Home Folder.
If the Admin account wants the Standard account to have access to Admin's files/documents, Admin must put them in the computer's Shared folder or his Public Folder. However, Standard account will only be able to read them, not edit them.
Second, you really don't need an antivirus app. There are no viruses for Macs out there and you can be sure that when the first one appears it will be all over the news.
It was some time later that I realised that my user account changes were probably the reason for the MBA’s behaviour changes and that something had not been corrected.
First, what changes and where do I need to make them to restore USER to the full administrator access that it had when the MBA was new?
how do I create a second (standard) account for Internet access that has access to all the applications, folders and documents that USER has?
If the Admin account wants the Standard account to have access to Admin's files/documents, Admin must put them in the computer's Shared folder or his Public Folder. However, Standard account will only be able to read them, not edit them.
I can only echo the comments above: Time Machine is a better way to create backups for your MBA, it also saves you loads of room on the portable drive as it backs up incrementally instead of creating loads of duplicate files. Switching to that will also solve your access issue as you won't have to copy the USER folder anymore. As far as I know you cannot use Time Machine to revert your whole system back to a specific point in time (that's just a silly Windows approach to solving problems).
Just a thought, but the fact that you're still running Mavericks may put you at more risk than what you're trying to prevent through using Sophos. Also, the issues you're having with that may be related to the age of the OS. If Sophos has updated itself it may be out of tune with your OS which could account for the scanning issues. Updating to a more recent OS version could be the solution to that problem.
Just a thought, but the fact that you're still running Mavericks may put you at more risk than what you're trying to prevent through using Sophos. Also, the issues you're having with that may be related to the age of the OS. If Sophos has updated itself it may be out of tune with your OS which could account for the scanning issues. Updating to a more recent OS version could be the solution to that problem.
