Finding myriad locked files

Open the Terminal in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and type in the following:

chflags -R nouchg

followed by a space. Next, drag the external hard disk into the Terminal window and press Enter; all locked files on the drive owned by your account will then be unlocked. To do this with files owned by other accounts, use 'sudo chflags -R nouchg' without the quote marks, and provide your password when prompted, which won't produce anything in the Terminal window. Occasionally, a locked file or folder cannot be unlocked through this method, and requires the use of either Single User mode commands to unlock or erasing the drive.

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Hi Tom

Are you aware that you can batch unlock a group of files, by selecting all of the files in any finder window, including unlocked files, then Control + mouse click to open the contextual menu, to choose Get Info, (or Command + i to open it that way) and click on the locked box to unlock all of them.

Note if you only select All locked files the locked box will show as a tick. Click on it to unlock all.
If there is a mix of locked and unlocked, the locked box will appear as a dash. Click on this Twice to unlock all.

This does not answer how to find these files in one go, but it should help you unlock in batch quantities.

regards roam

Hi Tom,

Open the Terminal application.
Type:

cd
and a space. Now drag the hard drive icon on the Desktop to the Terminal window. This will produce the absolute path to the drive at mount point /Volumes. The text should look similar to this:

cd /Volumes/<your hard_drivename>
Press the return key. You are now in the directory that contains the contents of your external drive.
To search for locked files use this command:

find . -flags uchg

If you receive any permissions error then:

sudo find . -flags uchg

Use this command to remove the lock on the files found:

sudo find . -flags uchg -exec chflags nouchg {} \;

Tom
About entering passwords in Terminal.
- if permission is denied then you need to preface the command with
sudo
after you press enter you will be asked for a password, which will be entered invisibly, i.e. no little asterisks will appear.
Also if the terminal process is a long one, there will be no little spinny wheel or clock showing duration, you will just have to wait until the process completes and the terminal prompt returns.

So Neil's solution, first posted will work. I played with it and it works. It will for you too, if you understand about entering the password in Terminal.

roam

all I get with find . -flags uchg is find: ./.Trashes: Permission denied

You can't look at the .Trashes folder (directory) unless you are the superuser (root). The find command did not locate any files locked with the user immutable flag (that's the lock you apply in the Finder's Get Info window) in any other directory.

all I get with sudo find . -flags uchg is a password request, and then no response when I input my password

To expand on roam's response-
A command prefaced with sudo will run the command with root privileges. The prompt will change to password:. When you input your password nothing is printed (echoed) in the shell (Terminal app). Enter your password then press the return key.

There are other locks that can be placed on files though uncommon. You can search for all the possible locks with the following instructions.

cd /Volumes/<your external_hard_drivename>

This mean change to the directory that contains the contents of the external hard drive where <your external_hard_drivename> is the actual name of the drive. The find command can take an usually long time. It's best to limit its searches.

This command will search for all possible locks and list what locks are applied:

sudo find . -flags +arch,nodump,opaque,sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -exec /bin/ls -aol {} \;

The . after the find command tells find to search the current directory (folder) and all sub-directories. -flags +arch,nodump,opaque,sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg are the possible locks. -exec /bin/ls -aol {} \; tells the find command to list any files found in long format with what lock is applied to the file.

If the find command does not produce any output then there are no locked files on the external hard drive.

It's a tough one Tom. Any idea what caused all of these locked files in the first place? At least you have found 20 odd megs in your temporary items folder that could go.
Create file, and lock it and than apply Niel's usage and see if that unlocks it.

well, this didn't work either.

Hmmm...actually the command did exactly what is was supposed to do. Find files with all the possible locks. The three files found have the nodump flag(lock) applied. Two of the files are empty- 0 bytes.

The external drive looks like it's set to ignore permissions or may be it was initialized with OS 9 or less. Post the command and the results from the following instructions-
Type:

vsdbutil -c

and a space. Now drag the external hard drive icon on to the Terminal window; this will produce the absolute path from the mount point /Volumes. Press the return key. This should be an easy fix.