Ownership & Permissions in External FW Drive

[redAPPLE]

I have a notebook and an external hard drive (which houses my music). i am owner of the files in the firewire drive. i created a second user called "stranger" so my sister could still listen to music through airport express.

I would like "stranger" to have read-only rights (because i do not want anybody accidentally deleting the music files).

with my user "al" -> owner: al, access: read & write; group: stranger, access: read only; others: no access; i clicked "apply to enclosed items" (i guess this meaning all subfolders would follow the permissions stated before); ignore ownership on this volume is deactivated.

my initial question is: how can i set permissions throughout the whole external hard drive? i want to have read & write permission and other users should only have read-only permission and/or maybe "no access" permission.

 

[yellow]

my initial question is: how can i set permissions throughout the whole external hard drive? i want to have read & write permission and other users should only have read-only permission and/or maybe "no access" permission.

Same way you did for the music folder. Just select and Get Info on the FW drive icon.

 

[redAPPLE]

Same way you did for the music folder. Just select and Get Info on the FW drive icon.

so, just to get this straight, i need to do this to all the users? if i have let us say 10 users, i need to do this to all of them?

do you have a similar setup as mine?

 

[yellow]

so, just to get this straight, i need to do this to all the users? if i have let us say 10 users, i need to do this to all of them?

I think we're both confused here. If, by that, you mean, do you have to log in to each user and set the permissions the exact same way for each, the answer is no. Just do it as your admin user.

If, by that, you mean, do you have to log into each user and change permissions similar to: UserA can owns FolderA, then log into UserB and change the permissions so UserB owns FolderA, then no a file or folder can only have 1 owner, 1 group, and a global "others" setting.

Here's a tutorial on how permissions work in a UNIX (specifically Mac OS X) environment.

http://osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/UnixTutorials/ManagingPermissions/index.ws

 

[redAPPLE]

thanks for the link. i would read on it after writing a response.

let me recap:

i am logging in with a username which is not admin(istrator).

the user is "al". so i click on the root of the external hard drive in the finder. then i "get info". and this is what i set in the "ownership & permission":

with my user "al" -> owner: al, access: read & write; group: stranger, access: read only; others: no access; i clicked "apply to enclosed items" (i guess this meaning all subfolders would follow the permissions stated before); ignore ownership on this volume is deactivated.

i restart the notebook.

i would then log in as a different user (as "stranger"). if i think logically (correct me if i am wrong) the user "stranger" is not the owner of the external hard drive (it would be "al"). once i go to the root of the external hard drive, i click "get info", "stranger" is suddenly the owner!

how that happen is puzzling me right now.

 

[Makosuke]

I'm pretty sure I follow what you're having trouble with, but I'm not quite sure of why.

On one hand, I could understand why Apple would have OSX disrespect permissions on removeable media to make it more practical, avoiding cross-computer permissions issues. Certainly, that's what the "Ignore ownership on this volume" box is for, and why it defaults to on.

However, I did some testing with a FW drive I have here, and it behaved exactly as you described if I have "Ignore ownership on this volume" checked, and exactly like you want it to if I uncheck that. Are you sure you've got that checked when you're seeing this behavior?

Perhaps the "ignore permissions" checkbox doesn't persist across restarts (although it did stick through dismounts and user changes when I tested), so you might double-check that. Or maybe an admin user has to set it for it to "stick".

If that doesn't help, you might check the format of the disk (use Disk Utility); if for some reason it's in FAT format or some other non-HFS+ format, then I believe the filesystem won't have the provisions for storing Unix permissions, hence it'll behave exactly the way you describe. The only workaround in that case is to reformat in HFS+.

It's also possible that the Finder by default refuses to define the ownership for files you create on an external disk (the one I was testing was cloned from my startup drive), in which case you could use the command line or a freeware tool to change things for you. Check to see who the command line says the owner is by doing a "ls -l".

 

[redAPPLE]

I'm pretty sure I follow what you're having trouble with, but I'm not quite sure of why.

On one hand, I could understand why Apple would have OSX disrespect permissions on removeable media to make it more practical, avoiding cross-computer permissions issues. Certainly, that's what the "Ignore ownership on this volume" box is for, and why it defaults to on.

the "ignore ownership on this volume" is off.

 

[redAPPLE]

Perhaps the "ignore permissions" checkbox doesn't persist across restarts (although it did stick through dismounts and user changes when I tested), so you might double-check that. Or maybe an admin user has to set it for it to "stick".

If that doesn't help, you might check the format of the disk (use Disk Utility); if for some reason it's in FAT format or some other non-HFS+ format, then I believe the filesystem won't have the provisions for storing Unix permissions, hence it'll behave exactly the way you describe. The only workaround in that case is to reformat in HFS+.

i even tried it as root! and the permissions still didn't stick.

the fw drive is formatted as hfs+, so that can't be it...

 

[redAPPLE]

It's also possible that the Finder by default refuses to define the ownership for files you create on an external disk (the one I was testing was cloned from my startup drive), in which case you could use the command line or a freeware tool to change things for you. Check to see who the command line says the owner is by doing a "ls -l".

as you can see, the group and others can only execute or read. but once i login as a different user, he the user can delete files.