Q: Sharing & Permissions:  who is "(unknown)" ???

Peter,
I take it boot_1 and boot_2 are boot partitions? It certainly strikes me as wrong that the admin group has read only rights to them. the default is R+W, I believe.

You can change that if you wish.

that can be done by the following command:

*sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/boot_1 /Volumes/boot_2*


Now, if you REALLY can't stand having the unknown user around, try this.

1. make sure you have a bootable or TM backup of your startup volume. If things go south, you'll need it.

2. add yourself to the staff group. To do this run

*sudo dscl . -append /groups/staff GroupMembership yourusername*

Put your username in the above.

run

id

again to make sure you are now a member of staff.

DO NOT PROCEED if you get errors of any kind.


3. Switch your gid to 20 (staff).

To do this, open system preferences->accounts, unlock the lock, right-click on your username and select "Advanced options...".

In advance options set your group ID to 20 and quit system preferences.

Run id again to make sure the change took affect.

4. change the group on your home directory by running

*sudo chown -R `id -un`:staff ~*

5. Cross your fingers and restart.

If everything is working, change the group ownership on your drives with "unknown".


*sudo chown -R `id -un`:staff /Volumes/third_1*

and so on.

Good luck!

Message was edited by: V.K.

when (unknown) is shown as a user, Apple is recommending adding the leading underscore to the group id. As stated, problem stems from Apple going back to staff. The Finder Crashes usually occur if an attempt is made to change the (unknown) user through Inspector: ⌘I.

Anyway, I had this issue (migrated from Tiger to Leopard), and before Apple posted this article, the only real fix I found was to do an Erase and Install, and manual installation of my programs and a manual copying of my home directory files.