Turn off Staff sharing for files/folders??? MacOS Big Sur

Question

Turn off Staff sharing for files/folders??? MacOS Big Sur

Hi all,

I'm having issues with duplicating the sharing and ACL functions that used to come out of the old Apple Server app.

Thanks to some people here I was able to get to a point where I can assign group permissions to folders by way of the terminal, and then "inherit" those permissions by way of right clicking on a share point within System Preference/Sharing.

But, I've got a problem in that the "Staff" sharing cannot be turned off whatsoever. I can only change that to Read+Write, Read Only and Write Only (Drop Box).

I have folders which I would like to remove even Read privileges from for some users. But, the fact macOS assigns all users on a computer to the staff designation, that's seems to be impossible. Surely, there's a way to give them "No Access" just as I can with the "Everyone" group????

Posted on Sep 14, 2021 8:45 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,360 points

Sep 14, 2021 9:33 PM in response to Tech-RainDefense

The thing is, the Staff group is not something I created. it's something that's created as a designation within macOS which lumps ALL users into.

I’m not sure why that would change my suggestion. If you don’t want the Staff group to have any access, just remove the group entry on the folder. There is nothing in POSIX that requires you set a group. Most everything in your home has no group.

I even tried editing one particular user using the Advanced options on their user and changing "Staff" to "non-Admin" since that is an editable field.

”non-admin” isn’t a group, unless you created it, but I have no idea why you think you need to change it.

Remove Staff access altogether by deleting the group entry for the things you don’t want them to have access, or change the group for the folders to something that makes sense.

This forum isn’t the place to learn about POSIX permissions or Access Control Lists. There are lots of guides on the web. Make sure you understand what you are doing or hire someone who does. What you have tried is completely wrong.

You can create your own groups and give the members of those groups special access either via POSIX or with ACLs. With ACLs, you can also deny user and group access.

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Answer 2

Sep 14, 2021 8:52 PM in response to Barney-15E

The thing is, the Staff group is not something I created. it's something that's created as a designation within macOS which lumps ALL users into. At least that's the definition I've seen when I was searching for a fix to this problem.

I even tried editing one particular user using the Advanced options on their user and changing "Staff" to "non-Admin" since that is an editable field. After saving that change I restarted the server. But, when I went back in and checked that user was still listed as Staff.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,360 points

Sep 14, 2021 8:48 PM in response to Tech-RainDefense

You should be able to delete the group entry.

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Turn off Staff sharing for files/folders??? MacOS Big Sur

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