All applications behave, but whatever I do, the Finder still makes new folders not-writable for others. Is there a solution for this?
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
That's the expected result. What are you trying to do?
I am trying to get the Finder to make new folders writable for everyone, by creating a document /etc/launchd-user.conf, with content "umask 000" as described by Apple. It works for all applications, as expected. But not for the Finder, as not expected. Since Lion the Finder ignores this and uses it's own umask. This is a big problem for me, my users and many others in the world...
If you want to make a folder and its contents writable by more than one user, you should set access controls with inheritance.
You seem to be missing the point of my problem: up to MacOS 10.6 Apple's own instructions to set a default umask like I wanted worked. Just create a file /etc/launchd-user.conf with the umask you wanted and all software followed this. This worked for folders created on servers, external disks, NAS volumes, USB sticks, everywhere.
From 10.7 all software still uses this umask, except the Finder. Now you suggest I set access controls to my disk. Following the link from your text suggests I use third party software (TinkerTool System), for which I have to pay to do this.
Why does the Finder not follow the setting Apple tells me to use in a /etc/launchd-user.conf file? I consider this a bug...
No, I'm not missing the point. I'm giving you what I consider to be the best solution for your problem. Taking what you say at face value (I haven't checked), you may be right that the Finder ignores the launchd-user.conf file. I wouldn't call it a bug, since that feature doesn't seem to be documented in 10.7; only in 10.5 and 10.6, and only in the Server versions at that, although I believe it did work in the client versions.
The page I linked to gives a good explanation of ACL's. You don't need the TinkerTool System application to set them. You can do it in the Finder to some extent, though not with inheritance, or in the shell with chmod (see its man page), or with a very old freeware application called Sandbox (which might not work in Lion.)
Sandbox stopped working reliably for me in Snow Leopard, and since it hasn't been updated in quite a while, I've moved on to TinkerTool System. TinkerTool has a similar UI, with a setting to see the effective permissions for another user. The application does need to be purchased to use the ACL tools, but since it does some other handy things and isn't very expensive, its one of the few tools I've paid for.
Apple is aware of this bug in Finder because it is "supposed" to respect the umask in /etc/launchd-user.conf file as it did in previous versions. I submitted the bug report months ago and was told it was a duplicate and that they were working on fixing it. Here's to hoping 10.7.4 fixes this.
In Lion this seems not to work for the Finder.
