Permissions Headache

[Gnomo]

I have an external hard drive that I am using for my iTunes library and other data that I share between my wife's account and my own. I also access this drive via AFP from my laptop.

It had been working fine until a few days ago when I stopped being able to save things to the drive from my laptop. I checked the drive and everything looked normal. I owned the folder I had been trying to put stuff in, but every time I tried to copy something there, I would get an error message about not have the right priveledges.

After fussing with the permissions for a while, I decided to turn off the "ignore ownership on this volume" option. This partially solved my problem. I was now able to save to folders that my account owned.

So, I changed the group ownership of all the files on the drive to a group of which both my wife's account and my account are members (namely 'admin'), and then changed the permissions so that the group had both read and write permissions to all of the files (except a few specific directories) This solved the rest of the problem of saving from the laptop.

However, I started experiencing problems with permission errors on the desktop. The problem is that if I create a folder, its permissions do not inherit from the folder it is in.

For example if my wife AAC's a CD using iTunes under her account, it creates a folder in the iTunes library for the artist. The permission on the iTunes library is 775 with the group being the group 'admin'. The new folder's permissions are 755 with the group being 'admin'. So if I try to AAC a CD by the same group, it tells me that I don't have the proper access rights until I got through the terminal and fix the problem once again.

Does anyone have any idea why the permissions are not inheriting from the parent folder? Any ideas as to what I can do to fix this?

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Hmmm... IIRC, this has been a problem for some time now, but unfortunately, I can't provide any links...

New folders are created with a default set of permissions; namely, the owner (currently logged in user) has read and write permissions while everyone else, regardless of group, has read-only permissions. I think that's what it does, if I remember correctly.

 

[Gnomo]

Well, that certainly seems to be the case. I suppose that I could solve the problem then with an AppleScript attached to the folder.

Anyone know of a tutorial on how to make Folder Action AppleScripts?

 

[Captain Code]

My guess is because you are saving via iTunes to the external drive it is probably still writing the file permissions because iTunes expects the data to be on the local drive, not an external one.

Also, the admin groups will be different on both machines, even though they say admin, they aren't going to be the same.

Instead of trying to switch ownerships all the time, have you tried just making it world writable?

 

[Gnomo]

the admin groups will be different on both machines, even though they say admin, they aren't going to be the same.

I think I must have communicated the problem poorly. The problem I am having is only related to 1 machine, my wife's eMac. We both have an account on that computer, which are both members of the admin group.

The problem started when I was having a separate issue regarding connecting to the eMac via my iBook.

My guess is because you are saving via iTunes to the external drive it is probably still writing the file permissions

That may be part of the problem, but this seems to effect any directory or file that either of us creates regardless of the program that is used.

Instead of trying to switch ownerships all the time, have you tried just making it world writable?

What has to be done really isn't changing the ownership at all. The files inherit the correct group from the directory they are in. The problem is that the group (and everyone) only have read access. So, if my wife creates a folder, and I want to put something in it, I have to go into terminal to chmod the directory before I can add anything. ::evil::