I copied a file from my Mac to my wife's Mac. I wanted to use it in an application that says it has insufficient privileges to update that file.
I looked at it on her computer and saw:
On my computer the file has the following:
howardjbrazee is an administrator on her computer.
Why doesn't she have permission to use that file?
iMac 24″, macOS 12.4
How, exactly, did you transfer it?
The way to transfer it and make the recipient the owner is to place it in the user’s Drop Box in their Public folder.
If you pull it over from the other Mac instead of pushing it over, it will also gain the ownership of the user pulling it.
“Fetching…” means the file has a user (owner) ID that doesn’t exist on that Mac. Standard macOS file permissions on a document are owner r/w, no group, and everyone no access. So, if it can’t find the owner of the file, no other user would have permission to edit the file. You’d have to add a user on that Mac to the file and take ownership of the file with that user (Get Info, Sharing pane, ellipsis button).
An administrator on macOS doesn’t have omnipotent powers. They only have the ability to elevate their privileges which is what you’ll have to do to add a user and change ownership.
How, exactly, did you transfer it?
The way to transfer it and make the recipient the owner is to place it in the user’s Drop Box in their Public folder.
If you pull it over from the other Mac instead of pushing it over, it will also gain the ownership of the user pulling it.
“Fetching…” means the file has a user (owner) ID that doesn’t exist on that Mac. Standard macOS file permissions on a document are owner r/w, no group, and everyone no access. So, if it can’t find the owner of the file, no other user would have permission to edit the file. You’d have to add a user on that Mac to the file and take ownership of the file with that user (Get Info, Sharing pane, ellipsis button).
An administrator on macOS doesn’t have omnipotent powers. They only have the ability to elevate their privileges which is what you’ll have to do to add a user and change ownership.
You mention that howardjbrazee is an administrator on your wife's Mac and from the screenshot can see that you were logged in to your own computer with an account of the same name. However, that doesn't mean it's the same account on both Macs.
If you created these accounts independently on each Mac then they are different accounts which just happen to have the same username and password. If you want it to be the same account you'd need to be using something like LDAP, Active Directory or Open Directory to manage users on your network (probably more trouble than it's worth if it just for this).
As Barney-15E said; to get the permissions for the receiver, the file needs to be pulled by the user receiving the file. I have no idea whether ChronoSync would allow you to set that but if it does, bear in mind the setting would probably have to be done on your wife's machine to pick up not just the username but the (generated) unique identifier.
Manually deleting the user showing as "fetching" and adding an appropriate user to the permissions will fix the problem but you'd have to do it for every file transferred.
How do I check this and if necessary, fix it?
The simplest thing to try at this point is select a folder on her Mac and get iThe simplest thing to try at this point is select a folder on her Mac and Get Info.
Look at the permissions section. Click the padlock and authenticate with her credentials. Her user name should be listed with me in parentheses. If it is listed, but no “(me),” select it and choose “Make ‘username (me)’ the owner” from the ellipsis pop up menu.
If there is a group (icon with two silhouettes), select it and click the – button.
If there is more than one “everyone,” select the one with two silhouettes and remove it.
Set the everyone with three silhouettes to “no access.”
If it says you have custom access, stop and ask for further directions. Otherwise,
From the ellipsis pop up menu, select “Apply to enclosed items…”
That should repair any permission problems.
It will be listed in Privacy tab of Security & Privacy system preferences under Files & Folders.
If it is not, and it hasn't asked, you can try adding it to Full Disk Access.
The license for the app is completely irrelevant.
The title of this post is, "Privilege is fetching…"
That implies the files copied have an owner account that does not exist on the Mac.
Just because an account has the same name on different Macs does not make it the same account. Hidden underneath is a User ID. That is what determines the privileges. On her Mac, her user account may have UID 501. On your Mac, she could have a user account using the same exact name, but the UID is likely 502 or higher.
If the files copied over to her Mac have a UID different than her UID, then you will have a problem.
I think what Barney is trying to explain is:
Case 1: your wife logs in as herself on the target Mac and copies files from the removable drive into a folder within her user account. In that case, everything should work with those files as long as she is running software while logged in to her user account on the target Mac.
Case 2: you are logged in as yourself, a different user account from your wife's account, and copy files from wherever into her user account folder(s). In that case, there may be permission issues accessing those files either directly or from a program.
Case 1 should have no issues, Case 2 may have some issues depending on factors which may be hard to anticipate and depending on how you have configured things. It almost always works best when transferring files like this to log in as the user whose folders are the target location for the copied files.
I think Barney explained this several different ways. My experience matches what Barney has been saying. I frequently copy files between Macs and between users and see what Barney has been indicating.
The app may have insufficient privileges. Did you give it permission to access her documents?
It should ask if it did not create the file you are trying to open.
howardfromlafayette wrote:
I looked at my computer, and that app had access to my Downloads, Documents, & Desktop folders, for some reason. I went to her computer and saw it had access to only Downloads. I couldn't figure out how to add the folder I care about, so gave the application full disk access.
It didn't help, the program still had insufficient privileges.
From the App on her account, try to open a file that is in the Documents folder. It should ask if you want to allow it access to Documents. Or, in Finder, ctrl-click on a file and choose Open With > the app.
If you have all of those locations on your Mac, then at least it was written to ask. Whether this will trigger the request, I don't know. Nor do I know if it should allow you to then open the file with the app.
You, from your account, howardjbrazee, copied the folder from your Mac into your wife's account music folder?
Or, using your wife's user account on her Mac, copied the folder from your Mac to her music folder?
The former will cause problems.
The latter should work.
I don’t know which user account you use to log into a particular Mac.
If you use her user account t when you copy from the USB stick, then it should assign her permissions to the folder and enclosed files.
If you used another account on her Mac to copy the files into her Music folder, then the files would have that account’s permissions.
I looked at my computer, and that app had access to my Downloads, Documents, & Desktop folders, for some reason. I went to her computer and saw it had access to only Downloads. I couldn't figure out how to add the folder I care about, so gave the application full disk access.
It didn't help, the program still had insufficient privileges.
This time, I went into "System Preferences/User & Groups" on both of our computers and added me to my wife's computer, and her to my computer with admin privilege. I also removed "Apple" from her users. I rebooted. She doesn't lock her computer, but mine now had two log on users. Then I went to my computer's finder and connected to my wife's music folder and dragged the kJams folder from my computer to hers. I could edit the file within from my computer but not hers, it was locked.
On her computer the folder's privileges looked like this:
I edited it like this:
I applied the change to enclosed items and now the inside file is no longer locked, but its privilege looks like this!!
I want to be able to copy that folder there often, and I don't want my wife's ID on my mac's logon screen.
I used the program "ChronoSync". My wife's computer has ChronoAgent. I guess I should contact them.
My Mac has my account, her Mac has her account.
Your user is still the owner of the folder.
You essentially did nothing I suggested which was the absolutely simplest, most correct method of fixing the problem.
Privilege is "fetching"
