Cannot Change Access Permissions For Folders In Code That Looks

I have a lot of code that looks for those: and we have linux systems with paths expected that way.

Realizing that there is a significant cost for me to deal with changing these am I simply hosed.

What it does is split the files between two volumes: a system volume containing Apple-provided system files, and a data volume containing all non-Apple and modifiable files.

The system volume is mounted read-only as (the root filesystem), and the data volume is mounted with read-write access as SystemVolumesData.

There are also firmlinks that merge the content from the data volume in where it belongs (e.g.

SystemVolumesDataUsers shows up in Users).

If you change something in a firmlinked directory, the changes are stored on the data volume.

If you try to change something in a non-firmlinked directory, itll fail because its on a read-only volume (even if SIP is completely disabled).

Most of the things you normally want to changeaddetc can be done from modifiable parts of the filesystem (e.g.

Cannot Change Access Permissions For Folders In Mac Do You

Do you have any important files on this Mac Do you have a good backup Do you feel lucky.

Disabling SIPs filesystem protection survives restarts, but remounting with write access does not.

If you want everything to be writable after restarting, youll have to repeat the sudo mount command after each restart.

What Id recommend, though, is locking everything back down as soon as youve made the necessary changes.

To do this, restart in Recovery mode, run csrutil enable, then restart again normally.

Also, while you need to disable the filesystem protection part of SIP, fully disabling it is overkill; thats why I recommend csrutil enable --without fs -- it turns on (leaves on) all SIP protections except the filesystem part.

Not the answer youre looking for Browse other questions tagged macos permission catalina sip.

This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc.