Q: Group permissions are Fetching...
One user on my network is having all sorts of issues, both on his own iMac (12,1 and Mavericks 10.9.5) and in connecting to the network and transferring files over the network. The problems are related to the fact that most of the files on his computer (and all new files that he creates) are set with his username, but in the finder Get Info window, the group is labelled Fetching... instead of Staff (although the permissions are correct as we set and umasked them: rw in order to be able to freely interact with other network computers)
I've tried restarting in recovery mode and using home directory repair in resetpassword, with no change.
When I go to the Terminal I find several things out of place: using the command id I can see that his user and group ids are set correctly (correct username and uid 501, correct group name and group id 20). But when I go to examine the contents of folders, for instance his desktop, I find that ls -le shows the group 501 attached to most of the files, and any file that he creates on that computer also has the 501 group. I could change all the permissions on all his files but all new files he creates have the funky group.
This results in often not being able to manipulate docs that he creates, including moving from one folder to another or to another computer on the network.
And the problem is user-specific. We created a new user account, and moved one of the problematic files into that account through the Shared folder, and it shows the correct group: staff. So as a last resort I can move all his account stuff into a new account, but this is going to cause a lot of other pain that I would LOVE to avoid, so I'm looking for another answer, if one exists. Like a umask for groups.
Any ideas out there?
Posted on Apr 4, 2016 7:29 AM