Repair/Change file permissions on 2nd HD (usual tips failed, all files locked)

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Repair/Change file permissions on 2nd HD (usual tips failed, all files locked)

A while ago I moved my system to a SSD and use my old 3TB HDD as storage for pictures/music/movies. Somewhere in the process the file permissions got badly messed up, it could've been by using Time machine "wrong" (I simply hand-copied the files from the backup drive since I didn't want to fully restore a system).

Now I have the problem that I can't save changes to my files. The permissions for the pictures folder look okay... (although I don't know why it is "custom access")

however when I choose "apply to enclosed items" the changes aren't applied at all, the pictures all show different permissions:

In any case, this problem affects my whole 50k+ photo library now, whatever picture I edit in Photoshop or other apps I can't save, the message being the files are locked (they are not marked as locked in Get Info) and it stays locked even when copied over to my system drive. At this point I'm having a proper nervous breakdown because nothing Google spits out seems to help and these "locked" files have long been backed up again by Time machine, leaving me with no option to restore my photo collection from anywhere.

Mac Pro

Posted on Nov 29, 2019 7:10 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

casadechrisso Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 29, 2019 3:51 PM in response to casadechrisso

After many, many hours and a few phone calls it turns out the solution was, as so often, a simple oversight. I always tried to change the permissions on the folders and ignored taking a closer look at the volume itself. The option "Ignore owner of this volume" WAS checked at the bottom of the Get info window but.... I never actually thought of applying the permissions to all enclosed objects here, the very thing I tried on the folders for a dozen times without success. The problem is solved now and I feel again like I wasted many many hours for nothing.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,782 points

Nov 29, 2019 7:56 AM in response to casadechrisso

The folder has an Access Control List (ACL) assigned to it. By applying to Enclosed, you copied the ACL to everything inside the folder.

Being that it is "everyone," my guess is it is "group: everyone deny delete", but it could be something else.

In Terminal, copy/paste this command and leave a space after the command. Then, drag that folder into the Terminal window. It will fill out the path. Hit return.

ls -aleO@

Copy the output from the top to the third file entry (top two will be . and ..)

Paste that output into a reply here.

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Answer 3

Nov 29, 2019 8:21 AM in response to Barney-15E

I hope I understood what you were saying, I'm not exactly terminal-literate... but you're right, "Deny delete" is assigned to everything. In the meantime I tried to change the permissions of the pictures folder to what the other folders still on the system drive (downloads, documents) look like, (me: read&write, everyone: no access) but again it didn't solve the problem and the change wasn't applied to files.

total 3938512
drwx------+ 787 chrisso  staff  -          26758 Nov 29 16:56 .
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxrwxr-x   13 chrisso  staff  -            510 Nov 28 19:20 ..
-rw-------@   1 chrisso  staff  hidden     43012 Nov 29 16:56 .DS_Store
	com.apple.FinderInfo	       32 
 0: group:everyone deny delete
-rw-------+   1 chrisso  staff  -       10443776 Oct  6  2017 .SFX_Thumbs.db
 0: group:everyone deny delete
-rw-------+   1 chrisso  staff  -              0 Jan  3  2019 .localized
 0: group:everyone deny delete
-rw-------@   1 chrisso  staff  -          25275 Dec 31  2011 0sEq8.jpg
	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms	       75 
 0: group:everyone deny delete

Edit: I just noticed that this problem even affects newly created files, pictures I scanned earlier today, not just old ones.

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,782 points

Nov 29, 2019 5:18 PM in response to casadechrisso

If Ignore ownership was checked, the permissions should not have mattered. You should not have experienced any issues with permissions on that drive.

As you can see from the output of the list command, you propagated the deny delete ACE to everything in the folder.

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Answer 5

Dec 1, 2019 1:33 AM in response to Barney-15E

I should clarify, I had checked the "ignore ownership" somewhere early in the process, it was not set right in the beginning when the problems first occured. Checking it alone didn't help, so I kept trying other things. At a later point, I went back to it and used "apply to all enclosed items", and that was the fix. Not sure if this behaviour was normal or not.

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Answer 6

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,782 points

Dec 1, 2019 5:22 AM in response to casadechrisso

The Apply to Enclosed propagated you as owner, but also propagated the deny delete ACE. You will have to Authenticate any time you try to delete one of the files.

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Repair/Change file permissions on 2nd HD (usual tips failed, all files locked)

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