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Level 4

3,290 points

kmosx5: "Apply to enclosed items" causes permissions issues on home folder

In Leopard, if "Apply to enclosed Items" is used on the home folder, massive permissions issues can be caused on the home folder.

The solution is this (courtesy of petrock)

1) boot from your Leopard install CD (insert it, shut down, start while holding "C")

2) Choose your language.

3) When the menubar appears, select Utilities->Reset Password.

4) In the window that appears, select your boot volume from the list at the top.

5) In the popup button below the volume list, select your user from the list.

6) Click the "Reset" button at the bottom of the window. This will reset the privs (and ACLs) back to their default settings.

7) Repeat Steps 5 & 6 for every user on your machine who has this problem (except "System Administrator (Root)").

Input on this tip would be appreciated.

17" iMac 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1G DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz 160GB hard drive, Mac OS X (10.5.2), iMac dual booted to run Windows XP. iPod 5th gen with video 30GB.

Posted on Mar 28, 2008 9:34 AM

20 replies

joshz Author

Level 4

3,290 points

May 17, 2008 2:13 PM in response to V.K.

It may be because of a weird setup on my machine (i chmod -R 770'd my home directory to give my admin account full access), but it worked fine (no acls on the file). Here's the permissions from an ls -ale ~/Public/Drop\ Box:
Josh:~ josh$ ls -ale ~/Public/Drop\ Box/
total 8
drwxrwx---+ 4 josh admin 136 May 17 17:09 .
0: user:josh allow list,add file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr, writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,file_inherit,directoryinherit
drwxrwx---+ 5 josh admin 170 Mar 6 2007 ..
0: group:everyone deny delete
-rwxrwx--- 1 josh admin 0 Nov 12 2006 .localized
-rw-r--r-- 1 admin staff 317 May 17 17:09 Untitled.rtf

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

May 17, 2008 2:15 PM in response to joshz

I just tested it on another computer and there it works with +a. I don't know what's going on here...

joshz Author

Level 4

3,290 points

May 17, 2008 3:23 PM in response to V.K.

V.K. wrote:
I just tested it on another computer and there it works with +a. I don't know what's going on here...

Maybe you need to reset permissions from the install disk? 😉

joshz Author

Level 4

3,290 points

May 22, 2008 2:23 PM in response to joshz

In Leopard, if "Apply to enclosed Items" is used on the home folder, massive permissions issues can be caused on the home folder-symptoms are having to provide your password to move items within your home folder, as well as having to provide your password to rename items in your home folder. The issues are caused by putting a hidden ACL permission entry on everything in your home folder.

The solution is to:
1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal from the affected account.
IMPORTANT NOTE: copy the blue text in. Don't attempt to retype it, as a mistake could cause more issues.
2. Copy the blue text in, and press enter. chmod -R -N ~

That command removes all ACL entries from your home folder. The next commands put them back where they should be.
3. (Press enter after copying and pasting this command in). chmod +a "everyone deny delete" ~/ ~/Desktop ~/Documents ~/Downloads ~/Library ~/Movies ~/Music ~/Pictures ~/Public ~/Sites

4. (Press enter after copying and pasting this command in). chmod +a "`id -un` allow list,addfile,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr, writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,file_inherit,directoryinherit" ~/Public/Drop\ Box

After running those commands, your home folder permissions should be fine.

joshz Author

Level 4

3,290 points

May 22, 2008 2:24 PM in response to joshz

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7244545#7244545 is ready for consideration.

kmosx5: "Apply to enclosed items" causes permissions issues on home folder