Skip to main content
Question

Error: Failed to create internal socket. Your file permissions may be incorrect.

  • May 22, 2025
  • 5 replies
  • 65 views
C
Forum|alt.badge.img

Full error message pop-up reads:  "Failed to create internal socket. Your file permissions may be incorrect. Please contact Box Support if this continues."  App will not load or run; hangs after this error and then warns to close any open files (?) before quitting. 

MacBook Pro, Mac OS just updated Big Sur to 11.5.1 this morning and don't know if the problem was there before that update. Box Drive app version 2.22.445

Despite the many results on my forum search, I can't find anything on this specific error message or that appears to address file permissions in the results. Search for "internal socket" did not find that specific string so now I'm really wondering.

The Box folder on my MacBook Pro was there a few days ago, but is now completely gone (at least invisible at the moment). I have seen the folders in Box online, but have not taken the time to double-check if all is there.  Yes, I was doing some file management work the past couple of days. Trying (in vain, it seems) to get OneDrive completely out of the machine while getting control of MY FILES back. Yes, I did some major file permissions changes while working on that. But I didn't specifically make any changes to the Box folder. I may have made a global change and had it cascade down to all subfolders, of which the Box folder was one.  

    5 replies

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Hi Bob, 

    Welcome to the Box Community!

    This is actually the first time I've encountered this error here in the community and if this happened after you've made permissions changes on your device, it very likely that this a result of it.

    Have you tried to uninstall/ reinstall the Box app for this error? If yes and the issue persist, if you change the permissions back to the original, does it allow you to run the application?

    Best,

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    I checked the permissions and discovered that I had evidently changed file sharing on the entire hard drive (which would include Applications) in addition to tweaking the permissions on the intended directories.  So, I undid that mistake and restarted.

    I then uninstalled Box drive, which was not as easy as it should have been. I had to go into Activity Monitor, find a Box UI still listed (only piece of the software still listed) and got rid of it there. Then, I ran the install from the .pkg that I had freshly downloaded. Next, I ran the uninstall script in Terminal, which appeared to run normally. 

    When I ran the install from the .pkg, it appeared to go through, but then very soon gave the same Error message as in OP and warned that any open Box file might be lost if not saved. I exited from both those pop-ups and went to Activity Monitor to see what might still be running.  When the window opened, I briefly saw Box listed and then it disappeared. I searched for Box and turned up these elements still running:

    Box Finder Extension

    Box UI

    Box Helper

    I'm not sure what my next steps might be. I know that at least once earlier today after I'd gotten the error a couple of times, I selected "Send log to Box" as I exited. And I know I have done that once in this round of attempts (although maybe not this last attempt).  I feel pretty confident I can recreate the problem should someone need more detail or a tracer.  

    One rather strange co-occurrence that may be related or not. I was doing a lot of cleaning out the previous two days (along with trying to wrestle some files away from OneDrive). I had put a fairly large number of files into Trash but had not yet purged them. After the computer had run a while today (through the first series of error failures), it said it was maxed out on storage. That seems odd as I can't think that I had duplicated but was reducing clutter.  At any rate, I purged the trash and got back 29Gb. This did not appear to have any effect on the error situation, though.

    My biggest concern is to assure that I can reconstruct my files from the web interface. I will have to look into that tomorrow.

     

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Hi Bob,

    Thanks for sharing this information.

    If you are still getting error when running Box Drive, can you try uninstalling the app following the steps in our support article below and then reinstall it again?

    Let me know how if goes and if you have questions and we'll do our best to help you!

    Best,

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Issue appears to be resolved.  It's a shame there's such an obscure error message that no one has ever heard of before. But the problem was no doubt very obscure as well.

    Multiple uninstalls/reinstalls after various tweaks and changes did not produce results. I finally resorted to running disk utilities reset permissions from within Terminal. Even that did not work until I first moved to the root and issued the command. (Yes, Terminal can be added to have access to all areas, something I discovered after.)  Even now I am not sure how I managed to get permissions so muddled across the entire drive; but that appears to have been the issue.

    The best news: Once I reinstalled Box, the folder reappeared and is perfectly synced.

    Hope no one else ever faces this horror. ;-(

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    I just want to thank Bob so so much for this helpful thread. The uninstall and install Box drive does not solve this issue. You have to run the utilities reset permissions in the terminal. 

    For future reference, if you are using Mac OS. The following command helps.

    diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

    If you need sudo permission, then it is 

    sudo diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

    Terms of ServiceAccessibility statement