Finder not displaying files, but Terminal is

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Finder not displaying files, but Terminal is

I have some folders in an external hard drives that, when opened in Finder, for some reason are displaying as empty.

However, when I use the Terminal to ls what's in the folders, all of the results I expect come up. All of the "hidden" files are owned by me, with drwxr-xr-x permissions. When I use open on the files in the Terminal, they open correctly, so they aren't corrupted or anything.

I tried chflags -R nohidden . within the folder, as suggested by others in this forum, but no dice.

Why did this happen, and what can I do to solve this? I've used this hard drive for awhile without issues, and this problem seemed to appear "out of the blue."

Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 19, 2014 5:58 PM

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Answer 1

BobHarris

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Mar 19, 2014 6:28 PM in response to eirikir90

What does

/bin/ls -aleO@

for the directory say. Unless the file names are sensitive, please post the results.

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Answer 2

eirikir90 Author

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Mar 19, 2014 7:26 PM in response to BobHarris

Here's a sample:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 eirikir staff - 242065 Dec 17 02:50 color_water_crystal_river_09.jpg

com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms 237

-rw-------@ 1 eirikir staff - 38447 Dec 17 02:50 flyinglotus.jpg

com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms 107

-rw-r--r--@ 1 eirikir staff - 267981 Dec 17 02:50 grass1.png

com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms 111

-rw-r--r--@ 1 eirikir staff - 207865 Dec 17 02:50 il_fullxfull.117911084.jpg

com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms 156

Looks like I copied the permissions wrong above, but chmod 777 doesn't have any affect, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.

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Answer 3

BobHarris

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56,945 points

Mar 19, 2014 8:00 PM in response to eirikir90

What were the dot (.) and dot dot (..) values?

Dot (.) is the permissions, ACLs, flags and attributes for the directory. Dot dot (..) is the directory's parent dir. Both would be interesting to see.

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Answer 4

eirikir90 Author

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Mar 19, 2014 8:12 PM in response to BobHarris

Of course, here they are:

drwxr-xr-x 38 eirikir staff - 1292 Dec 17 02:50 .

drwx------ 68 eirikir staff - 2312 Dec 17 02:02 ..

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Answer 5

BobHarris

Level 9

56,945 points

Mar 20, 2014 3:03 PM in response to eirikir90

Unfortunately, I do not see any reason why the Finder would hid those files, unless 'eirikir' is not the account running Finder?

If 'eirikir' is not the account running Finder, then the parent directory permissions would/should prevent other accounts from reading the contents of the parent directory. But that is not exactly what you are descibing, so I suppect 'eirikir' is the account running Finder, and thus it is a mystery why you cannot see those files.

If there is a .DS_Store file, you could try deleting it. The Finder uses that file to storage file placement and Folder display style information.

Other than that, I'm at a loss as to why the Finder does not want to display the directory contents.

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