[Tfug] Mac OSX permission problem...

[Zack Williams]

> I helped a friend set up his new iMac (Intel based, OS 10.5.2).  We
> did a network between that and his old critter (also doing OSX).  I
> managed to share his stuff from the old box with full
> write-permissions, but once I copied his stuff to the new rig he still
> had read-only permissions on it...and I could *not* figure out how to
> reset them.
>
> chmod and chown don't accept the same "-R" switch to allow resetting a
> whole directory tree (as in their /home/username dir).  Nothing in the
> GUI supported permission resetting.  It was a nightmare.

Are you elevating to root (via sudo) when you run chmod/chown? By
default, home folders in OS X are owned by the user, with the group
"staff".

In 10.5, filesystem ACL's are turned on by default, which augment
standard POSIX permissions, which may be getting in the way.  Run "ls
-le" to see the ACL's. In 10.5 client the only common way to
accidentally apply ACL's to any folder is via personal file sharing,
which it sounds like you might have done.

The GUI interface for permissions is in the Finder, File-> Get Info...
  See the "Sharings and Permissions" section which may be collapsed.
You can use the gear menu in that section to recursively apply
permissions once you've changed them.

- Zack