...
Is that enlightening in any way?
Yes, that was quite informative, especially the "boomerang uchg" flag that comes back by itself.
Other than the returning uchg flag, it behaves exactly like a FAT file-system on a USB stick or SD card. There's a sister "._" file, and the uchg and hidden flags are settable, which FAT supports.
The only thing NOT like FAT is that once set, uchg can be cleared, but then it comes back. That's somewhat like the schg flag, except schg is entirely unclearable except in single-user mode. The uchg bit, however, is allowed to be cleared, because this command doesn't print an error:
Code:
chflags nouchg,nohidden /Volumes/USB_Storage/tv/sample.txt
When it's immediately examined with 'ls', we see this:
Code:
ls -ledO@ /Volumes/USB_Storage/tv/{.,}*sample.txt
ls: /Volumes/USB_Storage/tv/.*sample.txt: No such file or directory
-rwxrwxrwx 1 phil staff - 8 2 Apr 21:42 /Volumes/USB_Storage/tv/sample.txt
That - between "staff" and "8" means "no flags", so uchg was definitely cleared without error. However, a few lines later, we see this:
Code:
ls -ledO@ /Volumes/USB_Storage/tv/{.,}*sample.txt
ls: /Volumes/USB_Storage/tv/.*sample.txt: No such file or directory
-rwxrwxrwx 1 phil staff uchg 8 2 Apr 21:42 /Volumes/USB_Storage/tv/sample.txt
Here, the "uchg" between "staff" and "8" shows uchg has magically returned. So the misbehavior is consistent for any file on the file server, in that the uchg flag ("Locked" checkbox) will never go back to an OFF state.
As I noted above, this is similar to the "schg" flag, but that can at least be cleared in single-user mode. Unfortunately, I don't know a way to try single-user mode and connect to an SMB file server. By its nature, single-user mode I don't think single-user mode will have SMB support loaded, so any file servers might as well be on Pluto.
The overall similarity to a FAT file-system (in all but uchg behavior) suggests that unplugging the drive from the router and plugging it directly into the Mac may give you direct access. That seems worth trying. If it turns out to be FAT, then we should be able to turn off all the uchg flags, unless there's something truly weird about the drive itself.
To find out if the drive is FAT, select its Desktop icon when it's directly plugged in, and do Get Info on it. The General subpane should show a Format: line with FAT32, exFAT, etc. If it says NTFS, it'll be read-only. If the drive doesn't mount at all, and you get an alert asking to format, Cancel that because it's probably in EXT2/3 format.
If it does mount as FAT, you can name it "USBStorage" and all the command-lines I previously posted should work. Try the 'ls' ones first, rather than the ones that change things. Then see if you can uncheck "Locked" on the sample.txt file. If that works, I'll make a cmd to turn off uchg that gives you a chance to review things first.
