Mac to Mac Sharing and Permissions Problems

Question

Level 1

5 points

Mac to Mac Sharing and Permissions Problems

Here's the setup:

2 Macs, both 10.6, one running as a home file server (an iMac) and the other with no files but logging into the iMac with duplicated user accounts and passwords for full access to the Home folders of the server.

So, for the two main user accounts (neither are admins) one can fully access the server's home account for the relevant login, but the other can't. Both show as having read/write access to the correct Documents folders (for example) but one account cannot create documents - does not have permissions error - when using the shares. Both users have correct access when logged onto the server directly, or using Screen Sharing.

Other than being separate accounts I cannot see the difference between the two accounts.

I have repaired the permissions on the disk (there were no noted errors in that area).

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Jason.

iMac 21.5, 3GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.3), + Black MacBook

Posted on May 3, 2010 2:32 PM

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Answer 1

RodneyW

Level 4

3,035 points

May 4, 2010 4:43 AM in response to Jazzer68

G'day Jason,

Just a random thought:

If you right click on the accounts in the "Accounts" preference pane, you should see "advanced options..." select this. Take note of the "User Id" for each account.

Do this for both computers.

Do all the user id's correspond to the names?

Cheers,

Rodney

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Answer 2

Jazzer68 Author

Level 1

5 points

May 4, 2010 4:51 AM in response to RodneyW

No, they don't. At least for the non-working account. The UUID matches but the ID field is 503 on one and 504 on the other.

I haven't checked the working account as I'm using it!

Can I change the ID fields?

J

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Answer 3

RodneyW

Level 4

3,035 points

May 4, 2010 5:18 AM in response to Jazzer68

Sorry mate - I am not sure that it is as easy as that! If you change the user id to one that is already being used by another account, you could have some serious trouble.

You need to realise that the account "name" is just a user friendly reference to the user id. The file permissions are actually stored against the user id, which is then mapped back to the name for display purposes.

To get this kind of file sharing to work properly, you need to create the accounts on each machine in the same order so that they get the same user id for each name. e.g

First account created (Admin) becomes 501
Second account created becomes 502
etc.

For your situation, the cleanest way to go (IMHO) would be to to start with a fresh install on the "empty" machine, and then create the user accounts in exactly the same order as you did on the iMac.

There are other ways of doing it without a fresh install, but they can be hazardous and time consuming in their own right.

Cheers,

Rodney

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Answer 4

Jazzer68 Author

Level 1

5 points

May 4, 2010 7:14 AM in response to RodneyW

What was odd was that though the accounts were the same on the two Macs there was no knowledge of this - each account was setup to log into the iMac with a UID and Pword from the iMac, rather than using an account from the MacBook.

I tried altering the IDs but succeeded in killing the keychain..

So, deleting the offending account and recreating it has worked fine. Suddenly it can log into the iMac and read/write files as it should have been able to do before.

As the MacBook is am empty machine deleting the account was a very quick process.

Thanks for your help, just wish I know what the problem was!

J

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