NSPOSIXErrorDomain:13 error in Safari

September 22, 2005 10:15 PM

When I try to access http://apple.com, Safari gives me the following error: "The error was: “POSIX error: Permission denied” (NSPOSIXErrorDomain:13)". What's going on?

I'm on a G4 Powerbook running Tiger 10.4.1, accessing the internet with a D-Link DSL-300 modem and an Apple Airport. Safari gives the most descriptive error, but IE and Firefox can't access the same websites, giving me variations on the "Permission denied" error. Even software update doesn't work. When searching for help just a moment ago, I noticed that http://www.hp.com/ also doesn't work.

I've used disk utility to repair my permissions, I've tried moving subdirectories ("Application Support", "Caches", "Preferences") out of my Library folder and logging in again with the defaults, but nothing has helped. No change in software or hardware has coincided with the problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

posted by teem to computers & internet (9 comments total)

ErrorDomain sounds like it could be a DNS lookup thing (random guess). open up a console window, try 'nslookup apple.com' and 'host apple.com'. then try 'ping apple.com'
posted by devilsbrigade at 10:21 PM on September 22, 2005

When I had a similar error -- can't remember if it is exactly that one -- but it was because of a cruddy proxy server my ISP used. You may want to see if your ISP changed anything recently that would cause this issue.
posted by birdherder at 10:27 PM on September 22, 2005

With a POSIX error, you're most likely looking system-side. If I had to make a random guess, I'd say that somehow the sockets directory is protected and new sockets can't be made to try a DNS connection. Other utilities may give more info.
posted by devilsbrigade at 10:29 PM on September 22, 2005

Well, here's a list of posix errors on OSX (link). Not too much more info it just says that error 13 is 'access denyed'.

It dosn't seem like the 'domain' here actualy refers to a DNS domain, but for what it's worth, the IP of www.apple.com is 17.112.152.32
posted by delmoi at 10:36 PM on September 22, 2005

Ah, okay according to this page the "domain" refers to the part of the operating system that's having problems (like POSIX, OS/9, Match, URL loading or Cocoa)
posted by delmoi at 10:40 PM on September 22, 2005

If you're running Console when this happens in Safari do you get any additional information?
posted by sbutler at 11:03 PM on September 22, 2005

You said you already repaired permissions, but double check the permissions on things like your cookies, cache, etc. You might try clearing them out. The error message is telling you that the program tried to create or open a file on your HD and the operation failed for some reason. It's not network related.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:30 PM on September 22, 2005

Also, how much free space do you have on the drive?
posted by sbutler at 1:49 PM on September 23, 2005

Console doesn't give any additional information. I have 3.5gb free (80gb drive). Strangely, if I restart I am able to open any of the "broken" pages once before trying again throws up errors.
posted by teem at 5:16 AM on September 27, 2005