[monkeybrain]

I think the permissions might be messed up for items in my Home folder, thing is that I can't tell since a Get Info reports that most files and folders don't have an owner at all. The only user listed in the menu is 'other' and this leads to a choice of users that I can assign to the file. However, once I have done this the Finder still shows the file as having no owner. I've tried using BatChmod to change some files too, but it had no effect.

So what's going on here?

p.s. I searched for similar problems and found these commands to fix permissions:

find /Users/dave -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \;

ind /Users/dave -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \;

sudo find /Users/dave -exec chown dave:dave {} \;

(replacing dave with my username), but they don't seem to work in Tiger anymore.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by monkeybrain

thing is that I can't tell since a Get Info reports that most files and folders don't have an owner at all. The only user listed in the menu is 'other' and this leads to a choice of users that I can assign to the file. However, once I have done this the Finder still shows the file as having no owner. I've tried using BatChmod to change some files too, but it had no effect.

So what's going on here?

What's going on? The Get Info window is LYING to you.
(It's a Tiger bug). Use the Terminal instead, and you'll
see all ownerships and file modes are intact. Or, just
relaunch the Finder and the Get Info window will work.

That particular bug is intermittent. It sort of appears
after the user has been logged in for a while (perhaps
being online or something else triggers it... I dunno).

But the Inspector (command-option-i) has a similar
quirk we can see anytime. Select a file somewhere...
say the desktop. Inspect it and expand the Details
disclosure triangle for the ownerships. Whatever
owner and group is shown for that item there will
also be shown for ANY item selected after that.

[osxrules]

Yep, it's a bug. I've seen it a few times. I actually thought it was to do with me changing my admin shortname, which consequently led me to delete the admin group in netinfo manager, which demoted me from admin to normal user. I had to reset root password and fix it.

I just don't trust the Finder for most things now. I have a contextual menu for calculating folder size and various other ones. On My Command is very good as it lets you add scripts as contextual menu items. You can also use Path Finder. I don't know who it is who writes the Finder but that person/people need to be fired.

Another bug in the Finder is where if you delete enough items in icon view to leave about 1 page or less of icons and those remaining are out of view, the Finder doesn't enable the scroll bars nor does it move the items. You have to resize the window slightly before it updates.

Sigh, you'd think that with the Finder being probably the most widely used app in OS X and it probably being part of the Mac OS for the longest that they'd have gotten it right by now.

[Chuckit]

Seeing as how this is a new bug, I'd say they did get it right — then they got it wrong again.

[monkeybrain]

Originally Posted by osxrules

Yep, it's a bug. I've seen it a few times. I actually thought it was to do with me changing my admin shortname, which consequently led me to delete the admin group in netinfo manager, which demoted me from admin to normal user. I had to reset root password and fix it.

That's a coincidence because I changed my short user name too and thought that could have messed things up. It's a really stupid bug, they've always managed it fine in Panther before, how come it has got messed up in Tiger? Did the Tiger bite off more than it could chew?

[Big Mac]

I'm rather perturbed over the fact that the Finder's chown (and probably chmod) functions through Get Info still do not work reliably in Tiger. I thought I read that Apple finally fixed the perpetual problems with that functionality, but I see otherwise. I'll click the lock to authenticate, change to a different user and then find the Finder has not changed it. Sometimes it works; other times it does not. I don't think it's possible I'm doing something wrong. Either I'm overlooking the obvious, or this is YARTFS (Yet Another Reason The Finder Sucks).

[osxrules]

It seems to be working OK for me in 10.4.3 so far - they cocoafied the Finder and removed the debug code apparently. I'll have to test further though.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by osxrules

they cocoafied the Finder and removed the debug code apparently. I'll have to test further though.