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Old 02-23-2006, 05:46 PM   #1
mdale7
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Drop Box permissions problem

I've been having a strange problem on my LAN. When I connect to my mac as "guest" from another computer (Mac or PC) and put files in the Drop Box, the permissions get messed up. Instead changing the permissions to grant me owner priveledges, when I "Get Info" on the file, the owner is set to "nobody" and I have read-only access.

I can easily fix the permissions manually on each file through the "Get Info" dialogue, but it happens everytime I recieve a file. I noticed the issue a few months after I installed Tiger. I was wondering if it had anything to do with the upgrade (perhaps something is wrong in the NetInfo?). Any ideas about how to fix this or how it is supposed to work in an ideal situation?

Thanks,

Matt
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Old 02-23-2006, 06:01 PM   #2
hayne
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I'm not sure if you are really having a problem.
The Drop Box is designed as a place to drop off files. You are intended to copy or move the files from there.

If you are having a problem, please show us a specific example of a file in the Drop Box. Launch the "Terminal" application (under /Applications/Utilities) and copy & paste the following commands, press Return, then copy & paste the results back here so we can see:

id
ls -ld ~/Public/"Drop Box"
ls -l ~/Public/"Drop Box"
echo "done"
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Old 02-23-2006, 06:17 PM   #3
mdale7
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Hayne,

Thanks for the quick response. Perhaps I wasn't clear about the problem. When I connect to my laptop from another computer and place a file in my drop box I thought that the permissions/ownership info was supposed to be changed from whatever user I happened to be sending the from to the user on my laptop. For example, when sending from my Dad's laptop, the owner should be changed from 'mark' to 'mattdale' and 'mattdale' should therefore have rwx abilites on that file. What happens is that the owner is changed from 'mark' to 'nobody' while the group is changed to 'mattdale' and is given read access.

The following is the terminal output from the commands you requested:

Last login: Mon Feb 20 14:46:11 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
mattdale@TiBookOSX:~$ id
uid=501(mattdale) gid=501(mattdale) groups=501(mattdale), 81(appserveradm), 79(appserverusr), 80(admin)
mattdale@TiBookOSX:~$ ls -ld ~/Public/Drop\ Box
drwx-wx-wx 5 mattdale mattdale 170B Feb 23 15:09 /Users/mattdale/Public/Drop Box
mattdale@TiBookOSX:~$ ls -l ~/Public/Drop\ Box
total 56
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody mattdale 22K Feb 23 15:08 The rock and obedience
mattdale@TiBookOSX:~$


Thanks for the help,

Matt

Last edited by mdale7; 02-23-2006 at 10:07 PM.
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Old 02-23-2006, 08:25 PM   #4
hayne
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I don't have much experience with using the Drop Box but I don't think there is supposed to be any magical changing of permissions.
Your user has read permission on the files.
The idea is generally that you would copy the file elsewhere if you needed it to be writable.
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Old 02-23-2006, 10:01 PM   #5
biovizier
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I don't have a solution, but mdale7 is correct - with AFP at least, any folder that appears as "write only" to the user accessing it (such as another user's "Drop Box") will normally behave as a sharepoint with 'afp_use_parent_owner' set (to give ownership of copied items to the owner of the folder), and also give the added items '777' permissions (not quite the same as having 'afp_use_parent_privs" set, so it may be a special case). With the permissions on the "Drop Box" correct as posted, and under the conditions described (ie. connecting as "guest"), these "inherit" functions normally would be expected to work.

However I am under the impression that this problem is not uncommon in "Tiger" (which I don't have) - maybe not so much in this forum, but I've seen a lot of posts here and there describing problems with the "inherit" settings in general, or the "Drop Box" specifically, not working in "Tiger" (both client and server). Unfortunately, I don't think I've seen an explanation or a solution posted, and I'm not even clear if it is a true "bug", or just a configuration issue (I don't have "Tiger").

But as already suggested, the workaround of making a quick copy (which will be "writable") is probably easier than using "Get Info" to change permissions of the original...
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Old 02-23-2006, 10:06 PM   #6
mdale7
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Hayne,

Perhaps I haven't been very clear in what I've told you. This is a step-by-step walkthrough of the problem:
  1. I want to transfer a file "Foo.doc" from my iMac to my TiBook
  2. I connect to my Tibook by selecting "Connect to Server" from the "Go" menu
  3. I type in the address of my TiBook (tibookosx.local)
  4. I login as a Guest
  5. The server mattdale mounts on the iMac desktop
  6. I double-click on the mounted disk
  7. I drag-and-drop the file "Foo.doc" onto the "Drop Box"
  8. I get the message "You will not see the results of this operation, do you want to continue" (or something to that effect) and click "Ok"
  9. I leave the iMac and walk to my TiBook
  10. I open the Drop Box folder on my TiBook (located in my ~/Public folder)
  11. I drag the file from the Drop Box folder to my desktop
  12. I select the file "Foo.doc" and choose "Get Info" from the "File" menu (this could alternately be accomplished by using the command ls -l from the terminal)
  13. I see that I have read-only permission on the file
  14. If I use the same process to transfer a different file from my TiBook to my iMac, however, when I "Get Info" on the file I find that I have read-write permission on the file

What I don't understand is why the files on the iMac and the TiBook give the user different permissions (read-write as opposed to read-only respectively).

Quote:
Originally Posted by hayne
...I don't think there is supposed to be any magical changing of permissions.
Your user has read permission on the files.

In checking out what happens on my iMac, I found that there was no "magical" changing of owners of the file (i.e. the owner was still 'nobody'). However, on the iMac, my user 'designer2' had read/write access to the file. As I mentioned when I transferred the same file back to my laptop I only had read permissions. I've posted the terminal output from the iMac below (the terminal output from the TiBook can be found in my previous post):

Last login: Thu Feb 23 17:49:51 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
designer2:~ designer2$ id
uid=502(designer2) gid=502(designer2) groups=502(designer2), 81(appserveradm), 79(appserverusr), 80(admin)
designer2:~ designer2$ ls -ld ~/Public/Drop\ Box
drwx-wx-wx 4 designer designer 136 Feb 23 17:54 /Users/designer2/Public/Drop Box
designer2:~ designer2$ ls -l ~/Public/Drop\ Box
total 56
-rwxrwxrwx 1 nobody designer 28171 Feb 23 17:54 powerbook_specs.rtf
designer2:~ designer2$



I realize that I could set up a launchd script to watch the Drop Box folder and change the permissions of any files placed in it to read/write, but I would rather figure out (if possible) what is causing the problem.

Thanks,

Matt
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Old 02-23-2006, 10:13 PM   #7
mdale7
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Guess I took too long writing my response

Thanks biovizier for the update. I suppose, if it is a widely documented problem/bug I should just write a quick shell script to chmod the files to read-write-execute and use launchd to watch my Drop Box. What bugs me is that this problem is only happening on some of my Tiger computers and not all of them. The only difference I can think of between my TiBook and my iMac is that the iMac had a "clean" version of Tiger on it when I bought it whereas the TiBook has been upgraded from 10.3. As I mentioned before I wondered if something got messed up in the NetInfo in the upgrade process.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I would love to hear them. Thanks to hayne and biovizier for their help.

Cheers,

Matt
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Old 02-23-2006, 10:46 PM   #8
biovizier
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The the fact that the TiBook was upgraded from "Panther" in fact may be significant, though I couldn't say how exactly. One thing that it might be related to is that the way the user "unknown" (uid=99) is handled has changed from "Panther" to "Tiger". In "Panther", an item owned by user "99:99" appears to be owned by the user trying to access the file and the group "unknown", whereas in "Tiger", both "owner" and "group" will correspond to the user accessing the file.

The user "unknown" is a key part of the voodoo that afp uses to make the client user appear to be the owner of the files on the server - the server seems to present the share to the client as "99:99" and the client software does the translations to give the appropriate user the apparent ownership.

The whole thing is incredibly complicated - I can't wrap my head around all of the permutations. For example, in some situations, a file with '------rwx' permissions when viewed over AFP will appear to be rwx------ when viewed from the client side. There are a ton of weird "special cases" like this.

So maybe there is some carry-over from "Panther" which, combined with the difference in the "Tiger" implementation, is causing the problem. Or maybe this has nothing to do with it.

It might be interesting to compare the permissions of the "Drop Box" when viewed from both the client and server ends, both as the user and with 'sudo', but it might be faster just to try an "Archive and Install", or you could test your hunch and try resetting the "NetInfo" database on the TiBook (in which a before and after of 'nidump passwd .' and 'nidump group .' may or may not be informative).

Anyway, I wouldn't even call these suggestions - I hope it's obvious that I really have no idea what's going on and I'm just throwing them out there as ideas to chew on...
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Old 02-23-2006, 11:21 PM   #9
hayne
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If your higher-level goal is sharing files between two of your Macs, you might want to get 3rd party utility "SharePoints":
http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/
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Old 02-24-2006, 11:30 AM   #10
mdale7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hayne
If your higher-level goal is sharing files between two of your Macs, you might want to get 3rd party utility "SharePoints":
http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/

Hayne,

I just want the OS to work as it is supposed to. I realize that there are third-party file-sharing solutions out there (in fact, I was well aware of SharePoints), but I don't need the added functionality. As I've said before, I am perfectly capable of writeing a shell script that will correct the permissions on files that come in. However, I want to *solve* the problem, not hack some work-around.

Matt
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Old 03-08-2007, 05:49 PM   #11
phoopee3
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Have you gotten this to work in the past year?! I have the same trouble...

When I copy something to someone else's drop box, it is still owned by me, instead of being owned by them.
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Old 03-08-2007, 10:10 PM   #12
mdale7
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Unhappy Sorry...

No, It looks like it's part of the way the OS works. I've been working on my Tiger Apple Help Desk Certification the past few weeks, and they don't even address the issue when they're talking about file permissions and sharing.

Hayne's answer (as much as I dislike admitting it) of copying the file elsewhere seems to me the easiest to use. Basically, just drag the file out of the drop box holding down the option key. This will give you a new copy with correct permissions. Delete the file in your drop box.

It would also be possible to write a shell or applescript that would be trigged by launchd when something is added to your drop box, I just haven't spent the time to do so.

Best of Luck,

Matt
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Old 11-14-2007, 09:48 AM   #13
vudutu
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Seeking a good clean fix

I have the same problem, Apple needs to fix this. This is a basic normal setup when you create a user in UNIX. My problem is the rights stay the creator, option dragging to the desktop will allow you to read and write but you still are not the owner and there are two copies of the file.

Last edited by vudutu; 11-14-2007 at 04:28 PM.
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Old 04-06-2009, 06:15 PM   #14
lokkovieira
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I have the same issue. Sooooooo, If someday you (mdale7) do write that script or feel like teaching me how to do it, can you send me a PM!?

does anyone did find out how to fix this!?

has apple said anything about it?!?

TNX everyone.....
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