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 cd 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

1. Get the latest Flash Player Plug-in for Mac OS X from Adobe
2. Get the Flash Player Uninstaller
3. 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.