Adobe Flash Player plug-in installer gives error on Mac OS X: error creating file. 1008:5,-5000 Access denied error

While attempting to install the Adobe Flash Player plug-in on Mac OS X you might get the following error message:

error creating file. 1008:5,-5000 Access denied error

Then you’ll see this error message:

You do not have enough access privileges for this installation

There are two Adobe TechNotes that are associated with this issue (8d46f4f8 and 4aa64290) and 1 decent forum posting.

Problem

Unfortunately these didn’t work for me, but I did figure out how to get things working. In the forum posting it was suggested that you

into the installer app and run the installer script as

sudo

. It seems that the installer runs fine (albeit a little slow at the end of the install process), but when it completes it opens up your default browser to the Adobe page to confirm your installation. You then get that fun little “?” icon and your browser of choice tells you that you don’t have Flash installed. Here’s the problem, since you ran the installer as

sudo

your user account and/or browser do not have the correct permissions to access the recently installed plug-ins. Once you change the permissions of the plug-ins you’ll be able to view Flash sites without a problem.

Here are the specs of my machine

MacBook Pro
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Mac OS X 10.5.1
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM
Camino ver 1.5.3
Safari ver 3.0.4
Firefox ver 2.0.0.9
QuickTime ver 7.3.0
QuickTime Player ver 7.3

What you’ll need

Get the latest Flash Player Plug-in for Mac OS X from Adobe
Get the Flash Player Uninstaller
Get your password for
sudo
or get an Administrator to help you

Here are the steps that I took to get this working on my machine

1. Create a folder on your desktop called

oldFlashPlayer

2. Move the following files (if they exhist) to

~/oldFlashPlayer

/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player Enabler.plugin
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayer.xpt

We want to do this because I don’t want you to be without your previous version of your Flash Player plug-in if this doesn’t work for you. If this doesn’t work then you can replace these file back in your

Internet Plug-Ins

folder.

3. Run the

Uninstall Flash Player OSX

to help clean out your system (this may take a few seconds).

4. Extract and mount your dmg image.

5. Open Terminal:

/Applications/Utilities/Terminal

6. Type the following in Terminal (I’m doing this line by line so that you don’t get lost):
for Intel Macs

cd /Volumes/
cd Adobe\ Flash\ Player\ 9/
cd Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ UB.app/
cd Contents/
cd MacOS/
sudo ./Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ UB
Password:

Enter your password once prompted.

for PowerPC Macs

cd /Volumes/
cd Adobe\ Flash\ Player\ 9/
cd Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ OSX/
cd Contents/
cd MacOSClassic/
sudo ./Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ OSX
Password:

Enter your password once prompted.

7. Follow the prompts for the Installer

This might seem like it gets stuck at

Items remaining to be installed: 4

. Just be patient it will finish. This is dependent on how fast your machine is.

8. Here is where most people will run into problems.
Your default browser will open the following page to test your plug-in version. You will get a prompt stating that your browser cannot find the Internet plug-in.

9. Open Terminal again if you haven’t closed it already and type the following to get to your

Internet Plug-Ins

folder:

cd /Library/
cd Internet\ Plug-Ins/

10. List the contents of Internet Plug-Ins and check their permissions (this is what mine looks like):

ls -l
total 40
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  wheel   102 Nov  5 13:18 AdobePDFViewer.plugin
drwx------  3 root  admin   102 Dec 13 23:45 Flash Player.plugin
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Sep 28 23:53 JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
-rwxrwxr-x@ 1 root  admin  4752 Sep  9  2004 NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Sep 23 22:56 Quartz Composer.webplugin
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Dec 13 22:41 QuickTime Plugin.plugin
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Sep 23 23:23 QuickTime Plugin.webplugin
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Sep 23 22:43 VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin
-rw-r--r--  1 root  admin   856 Nov 30 17:01 flashplayer.xpt
-rw-rw-r--  1 root  admin  2394 Oct 19 17:38 nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt

11. Change the permissions of your Flash Player plug-in files:

sudo chmod 775 Flash\ Player.plugin/
Password:
sudo chmod 775 flashplayer.xpt
Password:

Enter your password once prompted.

12. It should look like this when your done:

ls -l
total 40
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  wheel   102 Nov  5 13:18 AdobePDFViewer.plugin
drwxrwxr-x@ 3 root  admin   102 Dec 13 23:45 Flash Player.plugin
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Sep 28 23:53 JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
-rwxrwxr-x@ 1 root  admin  4752 Sep  9  2004 NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Sep 23 22:56 Quartz Composer.webplugin
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Dec 13 22:41 QuickTime Plugin.plugin
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Sep 23 23:23 QuickTime Plugin.webplugin
drwxrwxr-x  3 root  admin   102 Sep 23 22:43 VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin
-rwxrwxr-x  1 root  admin   856 Nov 30 17:01 flashplayer.xpt
-rw-rw-r--  1 root  admin  2394 Oct 19 17:38 nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt

13. Quit your browser and restart it. Then surf to this Adobe page to check your installation.

This should get you set with a working version of the Flash Player up and running on your Mac. Please leave me a comment if this works for you or if you run into problems. I’ll try and make the necessary adjustments for corrections.

Date

December 14, 2007

Time

3:27 am

Tags

Tags: Adobe, howto, Mac

blocker
hi!
thanks very much for this hints, everything worked perfect, after step #7 the adobe test page opened and detected the player successfully. version 9,0,115,0 is installed.
thanks again and kind regards
blocker
Rczj
Hello there,
works like a charm. Thank You, I’ve just started pulling hair from head then I found your blog.
respect
cheers
Anna
Thank you sooooooo much for this. It was kind of hard to figure out everything, but I’m sooooo glad it’s fixed now, so I won’t get the stupid pop-up about not having flash installed! <3
Bill
Worked like a charm by step 7. Many thanks for this solution.
Sincerely,
Bill
Damian
I would just like to thank you for your help witht his issue, and also commend you on the layout of your article. It makes things very easy to follow when they are broken down as you have done, with consistent formatting maintained throughout. Much appreciated.
Damian.
http://www.psyrendust.com Larry
Thanks for the feedback! I’m really happy to hear that I’m helping someone out. I’m just glad that I can save a few headaches with this post
Sami
Exactly what I needed, thanks a lot. This was very helpful for people who are not used to terminal. Got the debug player working fine.
Dave
This worked well in fixing my Safari browser but it did not manage to fix the problem when running Firefox.
http://larry.denenberg.com/ Larry Denenberg
I got stuck at step 6, for my PowerPC Mac. The problem is that Install Flash Player 9 OSX is not executable; its permissions are 644. So sudo can’t do anything with it:
sudo: ./Install Flash Player 9 OSX: command not found
How can I proceed?
http://www.psyrendust.com Larry
Hi Larry D., how about trying to change the permissions and then running the executable?
```
sudo chmod 777 Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ OSX
Password:
sudo ./Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ OSX
```
Joe
Perfect! Thanks much.
Joe
Richard A
Great directions, unfortunatly i am getting an error
Macintosh-3:MacOSClassic richardantreasian$ sudo ./Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ OSX
Password:
sudo: ./Install Flash Player 9 OSX: command not found
now i am lost
Hope you can help
Richard
http://www.psyrendust.com Larry
Richard, In your last sudo command you are not escaping the spaces. The alternative would be to:
sudo: ./”Install Flash Player 9 OSX”
vs
sudo: ./Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ OSX
Richard A
Macintosh-3:MacOSClassic richardantreasian$ sudo ./”Install Flash Player 9 OSX”
sudo: ./Install Flash Player 9 OSX: command not found
or
Macintosh-3:MacOSClassic richardantreasian$ sudo ./Install “Flash Player 9 OSX”
Password:
sudo: ./Install: command not found
I did as suggested, even tried something else and got the same error. I must be doing something wrong ..but what? Any more suggestions?
Undaunted,
Richard
Jeff
MANY thanks – spent the entire weekend trying to find suggestions to solve this problem. Maddening! I thought I ruined everything when I went into terminal yesterday…but your clear & easy directions saved me.
I’m indebted…as is my family!
Best,
Jeff
Richard A
I still couldn’t install Flash Player OSX 9 on my PC running OS10.5 using your directions… BUT…Adobe developed Flash Player OSX 10 and that installs no problem.
Thanks for your otherwise excellent directions.
Richard
http://blog.psyrendust.com/2007/12/14/adobe-flash-player-plug-in-installer-gives-error-on-mac-os-x-error-creating-file-10085-5000-access-denied-error/ Roy Huston
Have had the “permissions” problems on my Mac PPC even after trying all your OS 9 suggestions repeatedly. Was able to installed OS 10.5 with no problem. Don’t know what Adobe did different with OS 10.5 (beta) but it installs seamlessly. The only disadvantage is that it won’t work on all websites till it becomes permanent.
Thanks for all your efforts to resolve the OS 9 problem.
Thomas R
Found it! For PPC users go to your home folder and “Get Info”. Under “Sharing and Permissions” unlock it and add your username (password required). Then within your user folder select “Library” Get Info (command – I), Under “Sharing and Permissions” unlock it and add your username (password required). This give you the permission you need to install that last file! Send this to as many people as you know!
Thomas R
Running 10.5.5 on a iMac 2GHz PPC
http://www.psyrendust.com Larry
I’m happy to see that the problems are getting fixed. I know it’s a pain to try and get this stuff to work right some times.
I’ve noticed that a few people get stuck around Step 6 when trying to do the last sudo command to run the installer. The error that pops up is:
```
cd MacOS/
sudo ./Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ UB
sudo: ./Install: command not found
```
or
```
cd MacOSClassic/
sudo ./Install\ Flash\ Player\ 9\ OSX
sudo: ./Install: command not found
```
I would suggest listing all the contents of the current folder that you are in. Do it right before the
sudo
command in Step 6.
For UB:
```
cd MacOS/
ls -al
```
For PPC:
```
cd MacOSClassic/
ls -al
```
This will give you a list of all hidden/visible files in that directory. Once you locate the correct “Install” file, then do a
sudo ./"Installer Name Goes Here"
. Use quotes unless you are comfortable with escaping spaces with a backslash (\ ).
Let me know if there are still difficulties with this solution.
Cheers, and good luck!
Adrian
Thanx worked perfectly!
Stephanie
It works on the Adobe website, but not at other websites… I don’t understand. Why would it work on some websites and not others?
Laura
Hi, Im new here…..
my Q is i downloaded the uninstall thing but it wouldnt let me open. I knew i downloaded AFP but i couldnt find anywhere in my comp and i even tried the way u showed and i still couldnt find anything……
I rly dont know what to do… very depressed..
http://www.linkedin.com/in/heartburnhomeremedy Heartburn Home Remedy
The style of writing is very familiar to me. Have you written guest posts for other blogs?
http://beaumontenterprise.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=90886&p=3&topicID=27898211 Trakyfek
now I’ll stay in touch..
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