Administration on OS X

[simX]

I was setting up my mom's computer today, and I noticed a curious thing. All users are added to the group "staff" when created via the System Preferences application (Users pane). Also, the home directory for that user and all the initial subfolders (e.g.: Music, Library, Movies) are also all owned by that user, but a part of the group "staff".

This being the case, an administrator like myself cannot access that user's files when it's created, because the permissions for the group "staff" is 0 (cannot read, write, or execute) on those directories. Thus I have to change this using the terminal or other utilities before I can access it via the Finder. This is very curious, because they should be a part of the group "admin" when created, so all admins can access it, and the owner can, but then everyone else cannot.

I am curious as to why the Finder was designed to do it in this way. I cannot see any possible advantages that the current system gives over the simple modification I proposed, and I think my simple modification would not pose any problems.

Any thoughts as to why Mac OS X was designed to implement this this way? I simply don't understand it.

 

[kenny]

Couple of ideas...

I think it's a common misperception that your user account being marked as an 'administrator' of the machine means that you're root. It doesn't. Being an administrator of a machine only means that you can become root. This is a very good thing. Best practices are that you should never be root for day-to-day activities; only when you have some bona fide reason to need root access. A non-admin user cannot use sudo by default, although you can, and it's sometimes useful to, designate certain commands that non-admin users can run as root in /etc/sudoers.

Finder's behaviour is correct when creating files, since nobody except the owner of the files in a home directory should be able to access those files. Setting the group as 'staff' allows the user to define individual files and directories that everyone could have access to without having to change the group (which you cannot do in finder). If the files were set to be owned in the admin group, the user would have to set permissions on 'everyone', which is far more broad than intended for that kind of operation.

What finder needs is some kind of su functionality so that you could temporarily become root without logging out. This would also require that permissions (in get info) allow you to change the group, among other things. I don't know how likely that is in the future because adding those kinds of functionality is counter to the notion that finder should be simple and easy to understand. Many would disagree on this point, and would like all sorts of features bunged into finder, but I think it should remain simple. If you have a need to change groups, become root, etc., then you certainly have cause to pop open a terminal window and do it. For the average user, though, finder should remain clean and simple (as possible).

Anyway, that's my $0.02... make change as appropriate.

 

[simX]

I disagree. If you're the admin of a computer, and there's a virus in someone's home folder, you should be able to access it without having to login as root. This is what an administrator is for. Administrators should have access to EVERYONE's files. And by this I do not mean they should be root, but they should have access to other people's home folders in case something is going wrong in there. This is my point, and a simple change from creating these home folders in the "staff" group to being in the "admin" group is perfect. The owner can access the files, the admins can access the files, and then you can set whatever you want to everyone else, which is probably going to be no privs (not even read). Everyone is not too broad in this case because you have already taken care of the rightful owner and the admins.