Change individual permissions for all network accounts

Almost anything & everything can be automated via bash scripting on Unix.

If you know bash scripting...

I am not a bash script guru but if you look at the problem and if the actions are consistent and repeatable then it can/could be scripted.

Very roughly (and don't ask me to write bash script for you, I am not that fluent) assuming all user account home directories come off a common root it would be something like:

• enumerate all directory names into a file.
• Clean up that text file so you just have the names of the directories in a list.
• Write a shell script that uses the file as input; steps through the lines one by one; assign directory names to a variable; (assuming directory names same as account names) run command to properly set user/group permissions (recursively if necessary) on directories/files.

if it is worth the time for you to get knowledge in the area there are very good bash shell scripting books available.

If you just need to change the owner, something like this should do the trick

sudo for i in `ls /Users`;do echo chown -R $i "/Users/$i"; done

Adjust the path to the user directories.

Leave the echo in place to see what it would do.

Remove the echo to have it actually make the change.

You could always run it with the echo, copy all the output to a text editor, review it..

if you are happy you could paste the entire list of chown commands and they will execute one after the other.

You might feel more comfy this way vs having it all run in the background.

If you run it, this variation will give you feedback during the processing

for i in `ls /Users`;do echo "working on $i";echo chown -R $i "/Users/$i"; done

(remove the second chown to make it function)

HTH

Jeff

Unfortunately sudo wants a program (+arguments) as a parameter, not a piece of shell script, which makes it difficut (not impossible) to do on one line

You could:

a) issue a 'su' command to change to superuser first, don't know if that will be successful on OS X Server as, by default, Administrators are on allowed to go to superuser.

b) change this into a simple shell script and then run that with sudo

Just breaking things down so you understand what is happening, if we take a simple version of the command (which also is not going to change anything!):

for i in `ls /Users`; do echo "$i"; done

which returns (on my server which only has one user)

Administrator

Shared

each ";" acts as a command separator. Also you can use the output of any UNIX / Linux command as list of values to the for loop by enclosing the command in back-ticks ` `.

Going further with building the command (again without changing anything):

for i in `ls /Users`; do ls -la "/Users/$i"; done

the $i is substituted by the output of the first command which, as you see, is the name of the folders after /Users/

Here is the same (harmless) command converted to a shell script

#!/bin/bash

for i in `ls /Users`

do

ls -la "/Users/$i"

done

Here is the command to change user directory & file ownership in a shell script - note this will execute the changes.

#!/bin/bash

for i in `ls /Users`

do

chown -R $i "/Users/$i"

done

This is what I suggest you do:

1. Look at the interactive output of terminal command: sudo ls /Users do you only see the users you want to be affected being listed? If yes then you can proceed with the automated update.
2. Are the Unix user names the same as the folder names? This is critical. If the Unix user name is "fred.bloggs" and the users' directory name is "fbloggs" then obviously the command will not work because the 'chown -R' command is going to recursively change ownership of directories & files to user "fred.bloggs". Do you understand this point?
3. Make an executable script file - I suggest first a test one with my (harmless) script then the action one.

Assuming the harmless one, in terminal do

1. touch test (this will create file)
2. nano test (to edit it)
3. copy / paste 5 lines (including #!/bin/bash) into file
4. save it
5. chmod 774 test (to make it executable)
6. sudo ./test (to run it, the './' means current directory)

Look at the output, if you are happy step two is to make automated script and TO BE SAFE only change one test user. In step 1 above change to 'touch UpdateUser' to create a file called UpdateUser (for rest of commands change 'test' to 'UpdateUser') and copy paste this below where 'SomeTestUserName' is the name of one users' directory:

#!/bin/bash

for i in SomeTestUserName

do

chown -R $i "/Users/$i"

done

If you are happy with results of script change second line to

for i in `ls /Users`

save script, execute it.

Of course, as usual, this is at your risk.

The steps I outlined making a shell script file worked? You were able to change folder ownership on multiple folders (directories)?