[Spliff]

1) Is there a way to repair permissions on another partition or hard drive?

2) Is OS X stupid when it comes to permissions? I have two admin user accounts on my computer (with four partitions). While logged into my main account, I created two folders on a separate partition. I logged into the other admin account a tried to drag an document from the desktop top into both of the new folders I created on the separate partition. The file copied into one folder but with the other folder, I got a ownership restricted error.

WTF? They're two identical empty folders created on the same partition at the same time from the same user, yet they have different ownership privileges?

I did a "Get Info" on the problem folder and "Group" was listed as "staff (Me)" and Access was "Read only". Shouldn't access to a folder on another partition be "Read & Write" instead of "Read only". How are other users on your system supposed to access folders you've created on separate disks or partitions? It doesn't make sense to me.

[ZackS]

If the drive is not a X startup disk and you keep having to deal with these shenanigans, just set the volume to ignore permissions under get info. Note: this is a slight security issue but you should probably be fine.

[suthercd]

The group staff is a non-admin group. It is the group that sets read only for group permissions and r/w for user.

How many boot partitions do you have? I have found that running Disk Utility's repair permissions on "other" boot volumes is not a good idea.

Craig

[Spliff]

Originally posted by ZackS:
If the drive is not a X startup disk and you keep having to deal with these shenanigans, just set the volume to ignore permissions under get info. Note: this is a slight security issue but you should probably be fine.

Thanks, I guess that will have to do. However, this whole permission business strikes me as a very inelegant and inflexible security method. If multiple users are saving files to a common folder, then the group permissions should be read and write, not read-only.

How do offices that use Macs cope with this? For instance, a newspaper or publishing house that has networked Macs needs to be able to share files. Let's say I edit a document in MS Word and save it to a folder on a shared partition. Then someone else needs to edit that Word document. Before they can do that, they'll have to change the ownership permissons on the file.

[ZackS]

All you have to do is make sure that the group permissions are set to read/write, that's all (perhaps change the group to wheel if need be)

[Spliff]

Originally posted by ZackS:
All you have to do is make sure that the group permissions are set to read/write, that's all (perhaps change the group to wheel if need be)

Can I change this system-wide so it sticks for newly created files?

I've been reading a lot of complaints over at Macintouch and Apple Discussions about Mac OS X 10.2.x and the way it sets permissions to "read-only." Most of the people unhappy with this behavior work in offices with a network of Macs. They don't like having to continually change the permissions of individual files. The only work-around they've found involves a lot of Terminal/Unix hacking. Again, very inelegant.

Apple, apparently, claims that the "read-only" access of group permissions is a security feature and is going to stay that way. If that's the case, Apple should a least provide an effective and easy way for controlling system-wide permissions.