Managing file permissions.

A

applesupergeek

Registered
Hey guys, I haven't given the appropriate time to understand permissions in OS X, and I 've been having some issues with it, I am decently versed in unix so I supposed I had pretty much understood permission issues. But I have been having problems copying files between my macs, permissions problems.

As far as I can understand I need to set a uniform user name across my macs (I am not sure how I can change my current user name, can i?), is that correct? Hence all the files will have permissions for a set user, myself and won't have any issues.

But what about a friends mac? Do you set permissions to everyone so that you can transfer files and not have a problem viewing the, or someone else.

I ve also found it hard to just select a folder and have all the subfolders change permissions.

Thanks!
 
The UNIX permissions model of MacOS X shouldn't prevent you from handling files that you receive from others. Mac users share and edit files with other Mac users who are friends, family, colleagues, and mortal enemies every day without issue. What are you trying to do?
 
I would not recommend trying to maintain a uniform user name on your household Macs, as that will not prevent permissions/ownership issues. Permissions are not solely determined by the name of the user, and you would often be left confused because a file path may appear identical on two different Macs.
Is it possible that you are not having permissions problems, but are actually having problems with file ownership? Having the same user name on two different Macs will not help in that situation.
 
Hey guys happy new year!

@Mister
When I copy a folder from my powerbook to my imacs say, I try to delete it then on the imac and it gives me a hard time, it asks for user name and password, so far I have set all passwords to nothing so I just press enter/return. Sometime the same folder won't be permanently deleted of the trash can for similar reasons. And sometimes even modifying the file is problematic, but I don't remember a particular example to tell you the truth.


@Delta
Yes Delta, it might be file ownership issues, although I was using the term permissions and ownership -my mistake- interchangeably. Why is it not a good idea to have uniform user names, I don't think I understood your response. And what about ownership issues, how do you think I should best approach this?
 
applesupergeek said:
... Why is it not a good idea to have uniform user names, I don't think I understood your response. And what about ownership issues, how do you think I should best approach this?
Click to expand...

I thought I answered your question already - same user name on two different Macs does not prevent permission/ownership. It sounds like you think that the same user name on two different Macs will somehow prevent issues with permissions/ownership, and that's not so.

Are you copying files/folders to another Mac, so those folders go to the root of the drive - or to the target user folder? You may not have proper permission/ownership to delete folders from the root level of the hard drive, but you may be successful if the folder is originally copied to the target user folder.
You may also want to run a chown command on your user folder, to make sure that you have ownership of everything in your user folder - such as:
Code: 
sudo chown -R yourusername /Users/yourusername/
 
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