User profile for user: jayv.
jayv. Author
User level: Level 4
1,303 points

Sharing & Permissions unknown user

Hi,

When i check the information on a file or folder (any) with command-i, i see the usual list:
Jay (me) - Read & Write
admin - Read & Write
everyone - Read Only

But there is another one there that i have never seen before:
_unknown - Read & Write

I can't remove it and i have no idea where it came from.
It's there in every file and folder i checked throughout my harddrive and i know for sure that it was not there in previous versions of OS X. I don't know if it's 10.6 related but i noticed it first about 2 weeks ago.

I believe the _unknown user is the cause of hundreds of "ACL Found but not expected..." messages in Disk Utility when i check the permissions.

Any suggestions on how to get rid of this?

Thanks,

Jay

MBP 17" 2.6GHz Hi Res, 4GB RAM, 500GB // Apple since '98., Mac OS X (10.6.2), "Always make backups!!"

Posted on Jan 7, 2010 1:47 AM

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User profile for user: jayv.
jayv. Author
User level: Level 4
1,303 points

Posted on Jan 11, 2010 5:23 PM

Yesterday i found myself with a crashing finder every time i ejected an external drive, my sound was on the fritz and apps kept crashing. Cause unknown.
I wiped the drive and re-installed a clean OS.
I could not import my account from the setup assistant after re-install because the backup was 10.6 and the clean install was 10.5, so i had to create an account to update and install 10.6.
At that point i could import my old account but figured... that way i would get the same problem again with my old account becoming 502.

So i imported all my files, settings and prefs over manually and everything is working as it should now AND i am 501 🙂

Upon inspection 3 of the 5 partitions still had the _unknown user there and by accident i found the fix:

I added myself with the +, then selected "make jay(me) the owner".
As soon as i did this the _unknown user dissapeared.
I applied the changes to all the enclosed items of that partition and now the _unknown user is nowhere to be found on any of the partitions or files.

Thank you so much for your help, it's folks like you that make this forum worth while 🙂

Jay
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Sharing & Permissions unknown user

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