You Do Not Have Permission To Open "Music"

[mslilyelise]

Hey folks. Quick question for you. I'm running BigSur 11.6.3 on the MacBook in my sig, and everything is great, but I am running into a permissions issue. As the thread title states, I'm getting a permissions error trying to open the Music app. But here's the weird part. The first time I try to start the app, after a cold reboot, it works. But then it never opens again. Log out and log back in doesn't help.

I looked online for suggestions. Here's what I've tried:

- "xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /System/Applications/Music.app" - No change.
- "sudo spctl --master-disable" No change.
- "sudo codesign --force --deep --sign - /System/Applications/Music.app" - No change.
- "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" - Tells me I don't have permission to do this.

I'm at a loss for solutions. I can just leave the app running and then there's no issue, but that's not ideal or realistic. If I could get root privileges I could change the permissions for Music I assume, but not sure how to do that on macOS (doesn't appear to work like Linux in this regard). I'm just perplexed that it works once, and then that's it until a hard reboot/shutdown is done, and then it works again, but only once. That doesn't follow the pattern of behaviour I would expect for something that's broken.

Thanks for any help with this. Image of error below.

 

[mslilyelise]

Okay, figured out how to get into the root user. But it didn't make any difference. It came up as unable to change permissions in Terminal, and said I don't have permission to make changes when I used "Get Info" and tried to change who can read/write to music. So to be clear, I don't have permissions to fix this. As the root user.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated because honestly that's infuriating.

 

[mslilyelise]

So it turns out this is related to an OCLP problem, and I'm getting support for it via their Discord. Sorry to have posted this in MacOS related forum! Admins can delete or move as needed. Thanks.

 

[dksoutha]

Did you get it sorted out? I am running into the same issue on my Early 2008 MBP running Big Sur via OCLP.

 

[mslilyelise]

Did you get it sorted out? I am running into the same issue on my Early 2008 MBP running Big Sur via OCLP.

I was told on the OCLP Discord that it has to do with how macOS code signs apps, and that it was a bug they hadn’t figured out yet. The official response was “move to Monterey” and that fixed it.

Something I did notice is that if you leave the system for awhile and come back to it (3-6 hours) eventually Music *will* run again. Or you can leave it running indefinitely in the background, just remember not to launch it again. I never found a real fix for it though.

There were trade offs to moving to Monterey, notably Maps doesn’t work anymore because it requires Metal, which neither my systems or yours supports. It’s likely that the next macOS after Monterey will mandate Metal across the board so this is probably the end of the line for non-Metal machines.

Not sure if a 2008 machine will even boot Monterey though; check their project site and see if it’s possible. ?

 

[dksoutha]

Thanks for your reply. I thought it may be related to me using an external drive for all my music storage in an attempt to save space on the internal SSD. I would get temporary access to Music sometimes after running some of the command lines you mention above, but for mere minutes. I'll try your advice to leave Music running once it can load.

Monterey runs fine on my MBP, except for there is no PATA support yet so I run Big Sur.

 

[mslilyelise]

Thanks for your reply. I thought it may be related to me using an external drive for all my music storage in an attempt to save space on the internal SSD. I would get temporary access to Music sometimes after running some of the command lines you mention above, but for mere minutes. I'll try your advice to leave Music running once it can load.

Monterey runs fine on my MBP, except for there is no PATA support yet so I run Big Sur.

That’s good to know, didn’t realize there wasn’t PATA support in Monterey though I guess that makes sense, it’s been deprecated awhile. Yeah my understanding is it’s something to do with verifying the app. No idea why it works once, or every so often, didn’t really get an answer for that part and I’m not a developer myself, so I wouldn’t know where to go looking.

I debated keeping BigSur because Maps and Photo Booth still work on them, you lose those apps in Monterey because they require Metal GPU support. In the end I decided I can just use my phone for those purposes.

 

[dksoutha]

To continue knocking this around for a bit longer: running "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" tells me that I do not have permission as the file is read-only, but then the app opens as normal. I'll leave it open as see how things go.

 

[mslilyelise]

To continue knocking this around for a bit longer: running "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" tells me that I do not have permission as the file is read-only, but then the app opens as normal. I'll leave it open as see how things go.

If you run the command, can you open the app again directly after? Cause that’s better than no fix for sure.

 

[dksoutha]

If you run the command, can you open the app again directly after? Cause that’s better than no fix for sure.

In my case, yes. The system had been running for about 20 minutes to an hour at each attempt. This afternoon I’ll try both cold and warm booting and see if it’s still effective.

 

[dksoutha]

Rebooting with the Music app open already: the app opens automatically and without the need for "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app".
Warm reboot without the app open already: using "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" before opening the app allows it to open.
Cold boot without the app open already: using "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" before opening the app allows it to open.

Still, every time I run "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" I get:

chmod: -R: No such file or directory


chmod: Unable to change file mode on /System/Applications/Music.app: Read-only file system

...yet the app opens. I was unable to open the app, however, after closing Music and then trying to reopen it, even using the "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" command. I didn't try waiting to see if the app would load later; I just rebooted and entered the command line before opening the app.

 

[mslilyelise]

Rebooting with the Music app open already: the app opens automatically and without the need for "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app".
Warm reboot without the app open already: using "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" before opening the app allows it to open.
Cold boot without the app open already: using "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" before opening the app allows it to open.

Still, every time I run "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" I get:

chmod: -R: No such file or directory


chmod: Unable to change file mode on /System/Applications/Music.app: Read-only file system

...yet the app opens. I was unable to open the app, however, after closing Music and then trying to reopen it, even using the "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" command. I didn't try waiting to see if the app would load later; I just rebooted and entered the command line before opening the app.

Sorry I didn't post an update for this problem sooner.

I joined the OCLP discord server and asked on there, and they confirmed there was something broken in how Big Sur and Big Sur specifically authenticated apps prior to running them. As of now, the issue is not resolved, but they advised me to move to Monterey instead, which I did, and the problem disappeared.

Not exactly a fix, but certainly a way around. For all the Macs that OCLP supports, Monterey is functional if a little slow on older machines like mine, but no slower than Big Sur, so that's nice. Hope that helps somewhat.

 

[doctorwu]

Hi. I had the same problem on my Macpro 5.1. I installed OCLP 0.4.11 and it worked without any problem. Good luck

 

[Singingfishguy1]

Hey folks. Quick question for you. I'm running BigSur 11.6.3 on the MacBook in my sig, and everything is great, but I am running into a permissions issue. As the thread title states, I'm getting a permissions error trying to open the Music app. But here's the weird part. The first time I try to start the app, after a cold reboot, it works. But then it never opens again. Log out and log back in doesn't help.

I looked online for suggestions. Here's what I've tried:

- "xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /System/Applications/Music.app" - No change.
- "sudo spctl --master-disable" No change.
- "sudo codesign --force --deep --sign - /System/Applications/Music.app" - No change.
- "sudo chmod 777 -R /System/Applications/Music.app" - Tells me I don't have permission to do this.

I'm at a loss for solutions. I can just leave the app running and then there's no issue, but that's not ideal or realistic. If I could get root privileges I could change the permissions for Music I assume, but not sure how to do that on macOS (doesn't appear to work like Linux in this regard). I'm just perplexed that it works once, and then that's it until a hard reboot/shutdown is done, and then it works again, but only once. That doesn't follow the pattern of behaviour I would expect for something that's broken.

Thanks for any help with this. Image of error below.

View attachment 1951767 Okay i found somewhat of a fix for this. open terminal and type "sudo -i" enter your password then it should have root access. after that type "open /system/applications/music.app" this should open the app.

 

[Singingfishguy1]

Okay i found somewhat of a fix for this. open terminal and type "sudo -i" enter your password then it should have root access. after that type "open /system/applications/music.app" this should open the app.

 

[Presley9432]

Hi guys. If you relaunch finder, you will be able to open the app.

 

[eablokker]

Had the same issue on Big Sur with OCLP. sudo purge worked for me.

 

[monkeytrix]

Had the same issue on Big Sur with OCLP. sudo purge worked for me.

thanks -yep that works reliably! but has to be done every time Music is quit! An annoying bug for people with various music libraries! (Who don't want to upgrade to Monterey! 🤣 ) running Big Sur very nicely on a 2012 macbook pro 15" with 4Tb internal storage apart from this pretty minor bug OCLP is startlingly brilliant.

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