iTunes permissions
Chris recently ran into a problem with iTunes not allowing him to buy music via the iTMS because of a permissions problem, I figured I would take a minute to jot it down here for all you Googlers.
You do not have sufficient privileges
The error received when trying to download music from the iTMS was that Chris did not have sufficient privileges to write the file to his iTunes Music folder. Being that he is the primary and only user of his Powerbook, we figured that this must be a bug of some sort.
The cause
Chris, ever the do-gooder, has been buying most of his music via the iTMS and on CD. As you know, he goes to a ton of concerts - so he also picks up music at them. However, the cause of his woes was that he used a P2P client to download some Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson music.
It appears that when that music was downloaded into his iTunes Music Folder the permissions which were set by the “sharer” were on the file(s). Simply trying to change the permissions on his entire Music folder, recursively through sub-folders too, would not do the trick. This is because the “Owner” of the file was not the same as the user he was logged in as.
The solution
Change the permissions on the exact folder that the file resides, for any files which have these permissions set. For Chris it was Mraz and Johnson music (he may find out that there are more later on down the road).
Once you change those permissions, it might be a good idea to run the Disk Utility and Repair Disk Permissions to set everything straight.
Note: The above recommendations do not come with any warranty, and I do not consider myself liable nor responsible for any problems you might have after doing the above actions. Also, I do not recommend these action for those with complex, or highly customized, installs of Mac OS X.
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