iTunes: unable to authorize and unable to download media

Question

When I try to authorize my iTunes account on Snow Leopard (10.6) with iTunes 9.0.2 I get this error:

"There was an error storing your authorization information on this computer the required file was not found or has a permissions error. Correct..."

And if I try to download something from the iTunes store, I get this:

iTunes couldn't download your purchase.You don't have write access for your iTunes Media folder or a folder within it...."

Edited

Permissions:

Inside "/Users/cbrulak/Music/iTunes":

-rw-r--r--@ 1 cbrulak  staff   3211  8 Dec 14:05 iTunes Library
-rw-r--r--  1 cbrulak  staff  12288  8 Dec 14:05 iTunes Library Extras.itdb
-rw-r--r--  1 cbrulak  staff  32768  8 Dec 13:48 iTunes Library Genius.itdb
drwxr-xr-x  4 cbrulak  staff    136  8 Dec 13:48 iTunes Media
-rw-r--r--@ 1 cbrulak  staff  14040  8 Dec 13:49 iTunes Music Library.xml
-rw-r--r--@ 1 cbrulak  staff      8  8 Dec 14:05 sentinel

Inside /Users/cbrulak/Music:

drwxr-xr-x  8 cbrulak  staff  272  8 Dec 14:05 iTunes

Any ideas?

Solution 1

I changed the group owner to be "admin" instead of "wheel".

Despite the fact that the Apple KB says that the group owner should be 'wheel'.

Solution 2

Okay, I have more information. I bought a new iMac and moved everything over to the new machine. But I couldn't authorize or deauthorize the new computer. /Users/Shared existed and had the correct permission bits, so that wasn't the problem. Here's how I fixed it.

In /Users/Shared there is a directory named 'SC Info' (without the quotes, obviously). This was left over from the system move, but was not properly configured and contained files that were now bogus (uid was wrong, etc.).

The fix is just to remove the 'SC Info' directory. When I then tried to listen to music I had purchased, it asked me to authorize the machine and it let me!

Solution 3

Open up Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities/ ) and click on your drive and then run Repair Disk Permissions.

If that doesn't work open up Terminal (also in Utilities) and type:

ls -l

then hit return, and paste the result here.

Solution 4

I had a similar problem.

First check the permissions for the iTunes application:

ls -l /Applications/ | grep 'iTunes'

You will find iTunes owner is root and is in the wheel group. Check /Users/Shared - it will have the same permission.

I found I had deleted /Users/Shared when I removed StarCraft 2.

Entering the following commands fixed this and iTunes worked again:

sudo chown -R myusername:staff iTunes.app
sudo mkdir /Users/Shared
sudo chown -R myusername:staff /Users/Shared

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Comments

[cbrulak]

did that, really messy output in the comment window, will edit the question to get some formating

[ridogi]

Don't bother. It was to see the permissions on the iTunes folder but if you deleted it there is nothing to see.

[cbrulak]

this is after I re-isntall the app.

[avernet]

The answer does not mention which file or directory this applies to.

[cbrulak]

look at the "Edited" part of the question. All those files.