Corrupted Entourage Database after enabling Filevault

[Char Patton]

I just enabled Filevault on my Mac (G5 1.6GHz running 10.3.2 and MS
Office Entourage 10.1.4). All other programs seem to be fine, but when
I attempt to run Entourage, I am told:

"Entourage cannot access your data. To attempt to fix the problem,
rebuild your database."

I click "Typical Rebuild" and am told: "Compacting Failed. Access
permission is denied"

Then I go to Advanced Rebuild and am told: "Rebuilding Failed. Access
permission denied", followed by "Rebuilding failed. It is likely that
your database cannot be repaired"

Under permissions in the "Get Info" window for my Entourage database,
I am listed as the owner with both read and write permission, so these
error messages don't make sense to me. I have run Disk First Aid to
repair permissions with no problems but no effect on the Entourage
problem.

Is it true that my database is gone forever, or does anyone know of a
way I can recover this 1GB of information? If so, I would be most
grateful! Thank you!

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
I just enabled Filevault on my Mac (G5 1.6GHz running 10.3.2 and MS
Office Entourage 10.1.4). All other programs seem to be fine, but when
I attempt to run Entourage, I am told:

"Entourage cannot access your data. To attempt to fix the problem,
rebuild your database."

I click "Typical Rebuild" and am told: "Compacting Failed. Access
permission is denied"

Then I go to Advanced Rebuild and am told: "Rebuilding Failed. Access
permission denied", followed by "Rebuilding failed. It is likely that
your database cannot be repaired"

Under permissions in the "Get Info" window for my Entourage database,
I am listed as the owner with both read and write permission, so these
error messages don't make sense to me. I have run Disk First Aid to
repair permissions with no problems but no effect on the Entourage
problem.

Is it true that my database is gone forever, or does anyone know of a
way I can recover this 1GB of information? If so, I would be most
grateful! Thank you!
.

Apple's First Aid utility only provides minimal
reconstruction capabilities (and you have to run it
multiple times in a row according to Apple Care). Before
you trash your database, you might want to try something
a bit stronger, i.e. Disk Warrior to see if that can
repair the file and recover your data. It sounds as if
something in the file OS file structure got hosed. In
any event, I would strongly recommend that in the future
you backup the Entourage database file (and associated
files in the same directory) on a regular basis so that
you have some restore point and don't lose all of your
data when this sort of thing happens. Do you have a
system restore available? If you do, recover those files
for Entourage. If not, try a stronger recovery program
like Disk Warrior. That is unless someone else has a
better idea.

JW

"Nothing beats multiple backups to beat Mr. Murphy"

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----

Apple's First Aid utility only provides minimal
reconstruction capabilities (and you have to run it
multiple times in a row according to Apple Care). Before
you trash your database, you might want to try something
a bit stronger, i.e. Disk Warrior to see if that can
repair the file and recover your data. It sounds as if
something in the file OS file structure got hosed. In
any event, I would strongly recommend that in the future
you backup the Entourage database file (and associated
files in the same directory) on a regular basis so that
you have some restore point and don't lose all of your
data when this sort of thing happens. Do you have a
system restore available? If you do, recover those files
for Entourage. If not, try a stronger recovery program
like Disk Warrior. That is unless someone else has a
better idea.

JW

"Nothing beats multiple backups to beat Mr. Murphy"
.

I will take your advice to heart about backing up next time! It turns out the
problem was not Entourage, but rather corrupted systems permissions. Here
is what I did to finally correct it. Thanks for your advice and reply.
***
I enabled Filevault on my Mac (G5 1.6GHz running 10.3.2). It took awhile
since my home folder is ~1GB, but when it finally completed I found out that
my permissions were corrupted on most (but not all) of the contained files
and folders within it. This caused many problems with multiple applications
that I thought were application or file specific before I realized that the issue
was with the permissions.

Specifically, permissions were assigned so that I could "Read Only" while the
owner was "System" with true "Read & Write" authorization.

I used "Get Info" on my home folder to assign the owner as me with Read &
Write authorization, and checked "Apply to enclosed folders", but that didn't
work. I used Disk Utility to Repair Permissions but with no luck. I booted
from the start-up Apple DVD and repaired the disk and permissions several
times but with no luck. Apple hardware diagnostics said everything was fine.
I then ran the latest versions of DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro several times
which again said everything was fine but had no effect on the problem.

At this point, things were looking very bad. I had contacted AppleCare
multiple times over several days and talked to several nice and well-
meaning but not very computer sophisticated individuals. Finally, they
bumped the problem "upstairs" and we got referred to the following
document: "Troubleshooting Permissions", #106712.
The command line guru at Apple suggested to the AppleCare person that we
go to the end of the document and modify the command from <sudo chown
username "foldername"> to <sudo chown -R username "foldername">. The
"-R" stands for recursive or something, meaning that it will change
permissions in all of the contents of the folder as well as the permissions on
the home folder itself. Unfortunately, I was never allowed to talk to the
command line guru directly and all of this came through the front line
person who, while nice, had not too much of a clue. It is important that you
apply this command to the appropriate directory, by using the "CD" (Change
Directory) command. Confirm that you are where you think you are by doing
a "ls -l" first before invoking the permissions change command. If you don't
know command line code well (like me), see if you can find someone helpful
at work to guide you through this because the front line Apple folks were
not able to do it.

Fortunately, after many hours of effort following the initial problem, this
<sudo chown -R username "foldername"> worked perfectly and restored my
computer to health. Next time I will do a complete back-up before trying to
invoke Filevault again! Hope this helps someone out there who has the same
problem.