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You don’t have permission to view … ???
#48042 02/24/18 12:38 AM
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Every once in a while I run into a permissions issue that stumps me. Today’s problem fits that mold. The last few days I collected a bunch of images with Google image search. They are stored in a standard folder, which also contains a few subfolders with images that don’t fit the main folder’s topic, but are interesting enough to keep. The problem arose when the images in the subfolders turned out not to be viewable with Preview. The error message is: The file “xxx.jpg” couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it.

Checking the properties of a few of the recalcitrant files with Get Info doesn’t show anything prohibiting my viewing them: I own them with the proper read/write permission. I *should* be able to open them in Preview, but I can’t. Going through the motions of ‘changing’ permissions (individually or as enclosed items of the containing folder) to be viewable anyway doesn’t change my inability to view them with Preview. BUT the files open just fine in GraphicConverter. confused So it appears as if something about the affected files is being read as a permissions issue by Preview, but not by GraphicConverter.

Anyone know what’s up? Better still: how to fix it?


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Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
alternaut #48043 02/24/18 01:00 AM
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Originally Posted By: alternaut
Anyone know what’s up?

Nary a clue, but I wonder if it would be worth your while to boot into your Recovery partition and repair home permissions (if the functionality still exists and is still located there [I haven't looked in ages.])?


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
artie505 #48044 02/24/18 04:27 AM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
… I wonder if it would be worth your while to boot into your Recovery partition and repair home permissions (if the functionality still exists and is still located there [I haven't looked in ages.])?

Your suggestion was a good one, even though it didn’t work. You couldn’t know that because I hadn’t included my system specs: iMac Retina late 2014, 4GHz i7, 16GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.12.6. Sierra's version of DU doesn’t have the option to repair home permissions directly from the RP, but it forced me to find a way to do it regardless.

The solution is described in Something odd you can’t fix? Sierra re-introduces repairing permissions. The Finder’s Get Info_enclosed items repair took about 40 minutes, the Terminal follow-up somewhere between 5 and 10. No error -69841, and the errant files are now readable by Preview. I still have no idea exactly why GraphicConverter worked on the florfed files, but I have my suspicions... It's my go-to app for problem image files, hence my bringing it up here.

tongue


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Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
alternaut #48045 02/24/18 07:13 AM
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cool

And thanks for the functionality update and link. (Even if you had posted your version of macOS I'd not have know that you could no longer repair home folder permissions from your RP; I haven't looked for the functionality in years...didn't know it was gone.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
alternaut #48046 02/24/18 11:57 AM
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If I recall correctly, the Sierra version of OnyX had a feature that allowed you to repair user permissions.


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
jchuzi #48047 02/24/18 01:09 PM
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Wow, deja vu! This happened to me last week. Preview wouldn’t open a file that it had opened earlier that day from the same location, or any other file after that. Get Info on the folders and files give no clue and the permissions seem fine. (This was browsing old holiday photos.)
Other applications (I tried Photoshop) had no problems opening the file.
After a reboot, Preview could open the (same) files normally. I haven’t noticed the bug since.
Could it be unrelated to the message and have to do with allocated memory? I must have gone through a few hundred photos or so (looking for a specific one).

Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
Urquhart #48048 02/24/18 06:03 PM
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Thanks for your comments, Jon and Urquhart (Urk-related?). Next time this permissions issue occurs, I’ll have a chance to try rebooting or using Onyx. Should that happen, I’ll try to remember to post back here with the results.

In that case, I’ll first try a reboot*, as that seems a good, simple and reproducible way to start without resorting to 3rd party tools. (In fact, I had to do a restart (again) today when moving files into a (new) subfolder unexpectedly resulted in a duplication of the source files. When I moved the ‘copies’ to the trash and emptied that, like Siamese twins the originals vanished as well. Various move attempts inconsistently produced additional ‘copies’, without rhyme or reason. The reboot did away with all extras, and the recovered files now behave normally. No clue if this gremlin was related to the permissions issue.)

As to the method I used to fix the permissions. It should be noted that the 2nd (Terminal) step was necessary. The first step by itself was not enough, just as I noticed in previous attempts to ‘fix’ apparently good permissions. FWIW, when the problem occurred, I didn’t notice any memory issues, i.e., the (iStat) RAM use graph in the menubar showed ample available RAM.

*) NB: in my troubleshooting attempts I also tried the Recovery Partition route, and after finding a permissions repair option missing (belatedly remembering it had been removed), I rebooted again to use the Eclectic Light method. This sequence suggests a reboot isn’t necessarily helpful, but I’m not sure I tested after every step taken.


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Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
alternaut #48049 02/25/18 12:55 AM
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Originally Posted By: Urquhart
After a reboot, Preview could open the (same) files normally.

Originally Posted By: alternaut
I rebooted again to use the Eclectic Light method. This sequence suggests a reboot isn’t necessarily helpful, but I’m not sure I tested after every step taken.

On the guess that both of you mean "restart" when you say "reboot", I'm going to mention that it's been noted here on numerous occasions that restarting gets deeper into the OS than logging out/in, and that shutting down/starting up gets deeper into it than restarting, so I've taken to skipping the "preliminaries" and going straight to shut-down/start-up (after 15-20 seconds).

I'll qualify that, though, by saying that I'm doing it only since I've had SSDs; it was too cumbersome to do routinely with HDDs.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
artie505 #48050 02/25/18 01:41 PM
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Originally Posted By: alternaut
Urk-related?

No, haha, that didn’t even cross my mind as a possible association. The username is inspired by a past holiday to the Loch Ness area and the beautiful name of a shoreline castle in particular.

Originally Posted By: artie505
On the guess that both of you mean "restart" when you say "reboot" ...

Thanks for the reminder. Not sure which I did. Probably a restart, but it could have been a shut down and a start up.

Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
artie505 #48051 02/25/18 03:58 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
On the guess that both of you mean "restart" when you say "reboot", I'm going to mention that it's been noted here on numerous occasions that restarting gets deeper into the OS than logging out/in, and that shutting down/starting up gets deeper into it than restarting [...]

Good point, the (potential) difference between restart and reboot. I used both, although I wasn’t consistent in the verbiage I used. But the distinction is worth paying attention to as a possible source of variability.


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Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
alternaut #48052 02/25/18 04:59 PM
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Beyond this specific instance, I was trying to make the point that SSDs and their accompanying speedy start-ups have made shutdown/startup almost pleasurable ( tongue ), and that it may be time for it to supplant restarting in the troubleshooting toolkit.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
alternaut #48076 03/01/18 01:28 PM
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It's not a permissions error and you are not seeing things. It's a Preview bug.

I've ran into it several dozen times in the last few months. I use preview a lot and it comes up quite often for me, especially when I'm opening batches of images via Finder.

MOST of the time I can just fix it by closing and relaunching Preview. But that's not always a fix.

The other thing it often won't let me do is delete images. So lets say I've dropped in 100 images from an SD card and opened them all, and I intend to weed out the bad shots or duplicates etc and can usually do that with cmd-delete in preview. But sometimes it says I don't have permission to delete (move) them. Again, often have to quit and relaunch preview.

I wish they'd fix that.

Preview's got other issues too, most notably problems with "open related images in the same window". How it determines what images are "related", I sometimes cannot fathom. Turn it off, and it sometimes still insists on opening say 5 of my images in one window and the other 95 in another window. Quit and relaunch and reopen, same exact five open in their own window. Why? who knows...

I miss the old Preview.


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Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
Virtual1 #48098 03/02/18 02:56 PM
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Originally Posted By: Virtual1
It's not a permissions error and you are not seeing things. It's a Preview bug.

Thanks for your view on the issue. While at first glance the permissions repair might be considered instrumental, in all cases I can assess Preview was also quit and reloaded, and hence remained a contender for mischief. Of course, there’s also the observation of 3rd party apps that had no problems loading the files Preview balked at. Like you, I have seen Preview misbehave occasionally for quite a while, but the inconsistence of that behavior camouflaged its potential involvement.


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Re: You don’t have permission to view … ???
artie505 #48099 03/02/18 08:58 PM
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I found my notes on the Preview problem. This can work for any app that's decided to get stupid on you and refuse to return normal behavior:

rm "$HOME/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState"

I use that occasionally when Preview refuses to stop telling me I'm not allowed to open or delete pics.

(you have to remove the saved state file when the app is not running of course)


Post moved by Alternaut from the ‘Mac OS X Applications’ thread App Store bug?, where it was posted erroneously in response to post # 48095

Last edited by alternaut; 03/04/18 02:47 AM. Reason: + changed title to match thread

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Moderated by  alternaut, dkmarsh, joemikeb 

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