permissions totally messed up

B

bmcivor

Registered
Something happened to the permissions for almost every file in my user folder: Word docs, .jpgs, .pdfs, InDesign or Photoshop files, etc. Thousands of files were affected, all at once, for no apparent reason.

A Get Info on a file normally says something like this:

Sharing & Permissions
You can read and write
Name ...................... Privilege
bill (Me) .................. Read & Write
staff ....................... Read only
everyone ................ Read only

Now the Get Info on a file says something like this:

Sharing & Permissions
You have custom access
Name ...................... Privilege
everyone ................. Custom
bill (Me) .................. Read & Write
staff ....................... Read & Write
everyone ................ Read & Write

I have no idea how this came about. I don't understand why there are two "everyones" nor do I understand what the Custom access means. If I change the Custom privilege to No Access or Read & Write the file appears to act normally. But the errant "everyone" cannot be deleted. And the Custom access makes it impossible to change the name or delete a file (It says I don't have sufficient privileges.) But if I open one of these corrupted files with the program that created it and do a Save As… to another name, it saves it with the proper and uncorrupted privileges.

I would like to know how this came about and why it affected every file, even those never opened or in folders that were never opened. And is there anyway to fix these permissions without having to do them one at a time?
 
Doubtful it's a virus... but definitely run Onyx.

If Onyx doesn't outright fix the problem, then open Terminal (in Applications/Utilities) and enter the following (NOTE: always back up your files beforehand, just in case)
Code: 
sudo chmod -R 744 ~/Documents

and hit enter. you'll be warned about mucking around with sudo, then asked for your password.

This will rewrite fresh permissions for all files in your Documents folder (the -R bit makes the command recursive, going down into any folders and subfolders in your Documents folder). 744 is standard permissions (you can do anything, everyone else can read only)

Feel free to repeat on other affected folders , replacing the ~/Documents with the appropriate file path (you can simply drag the folder you want into the terminal window to get the proper file path) (DO THIS IN YOUR USER FOLDER ONLY, AND NOT TO YOUR USER'S LIBRARY FOLDER)

If your User Library was affected too, you can run the above command, replacing the 744 with 700 and ~/Documents with ~/Library like this:
Code: 
sudo chmod -R 700 ~/Library


It can be hoped that ONYX will fix the problem causing your permissions to be written badly.. If not, please post back.

Good luck.

And yes, i know, i know, you can do all this this through the Ownership & Permissions section of the Get Info window, but I find the "apply to enclosed folders" button doesn't always work as it should in my experience)
 
Last edited:
Onyx didn't help solve the problem. But the other suggestions did work out. Thanks.

It appears the permissions went kablooey after installing Office 2008. I can't prove that. But there are a lot of reports suggesting that the latest version of Office did not play nice on many Macs.
 
Wow, that looks like lazy programming from Microsoft... having an installer for installing a software on a Mac is bad enough, but it causing the permissions to change to those for other users is a really bad bug and a security issue.
 
The repair permissions in disk utility also helps, whats nice with the Leopard version is that it tells you what it does not like and does it for the whole disk.

However... I cannot confirm it acts on the private folder of users.
 
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