File Permissions

The Black Oil

I've a main folder for college, it contains maybe 20-30 sub folders (readings, downloads, articles, drafts, etc) and I'm running into a problem with Dropbox - error 36. I've tried a few things, but so far no luck. I've checked into some of my folders and noticed that some are read only so I've changed them to read and write. Trouble is, I've some folders with upwards of 60 PDFs and these files seem to be read only. Is there a way of changing this in bulk? Even if you change the folder you still have to go in and change each PDF individually which would be time consuming and if I downloaded more they've probably need to be adjusted, also. I've also sub folders set up that I don't quite need yet and some are read only.

Running 10.6.6.

The Black Oil

Thanks, I'm afraid the files are located in something like this.

The Black Oil\ Leeds\ University/Masters\ Disability\ Studies/Course\ Materials/Modules/Social\ Policy,\ Politics\ and\ Disabled\ People/Articles\ \&\ Readings\ March\ 2011

(this one contains 130+ pdfs)

So, should I have something like this?

find ~/The Black Oil\ Leeds\ University/Masters\ Disability\ Studies/Course\ Materials/Modules/Social\ Policy,\ Politics\ and\ Disabled\ People/Articles\ \&\ Readings\ March\ 2011 -name '*.pdf' -exec bash -c 'chmod 600 "$1"' -- {} \;

Something isn't right as it's not working.
Also, on the Get Info profile of some files it has me/admin/everyone, on others it has me/staff/everyone.

The Black Oil

Apologies, I should have stated this above I've the college folder in Mac HD/The Black Oil Leeds University, etc rather than under Users/Black Oil or Users/Docs, but can move it to Users/Docs if it will help with the commands you've provided.

The Black Oil

You're gonna shoot me, I was copying the bit with Black Oil and I don't use that name on my computer. This is what I tried

find /Echo/My Name\ Leeds\ University -name '*.pdf' -exec bash -c 'chmod 600 "$1"' -- {} \;

'No such file or directory'

Thanks for your patience.

The Black Oil

Hmm, still staying no such file or directory with that command you just posted.

Copy and paste it on here? /Echo/Me Leeds University/Masters Disability Studies/Course Materials/Modules/Social Policy, Politics and Disabled People

or /Echo is what comes up when I Get Info on the Leeds Uni folder, which is the main outer folder, if that's the word.

The Black Oil

Thanks, that seems to have cycled through OK and helped with the PDFs to read and write so by that logic I went for

find /Echo -name '*.doc' -exec bash -c 'chmod 600 "$1"' -- {} \;

just in case anything was up with the .doc files. Then tried to copy the full college folder into the Dropbox folder, but the error 36 thing persists. It doesn't matter hugely, everything is backed up on Time Machine and Sugar Sync, I was hoping to have Dropbox as a spare online backup in case something went wallop. It was all working fine before Christmas when my first assignment was due. Then I created new sub folders and downloaded PDFs for the next module and somewhere along the line this error started.

The Black Oil

Hmm, it gets to about 90 MB out of 140 MB when copying and then the error crops up. Similar to before.

I've also tried repairing the disk permissions.

The Black Oil

I think it's a bit more, not much.

I ran the dot_clean command before I noticed your edit in post #12 - after noticing the edit I quit terminal and went into it again, ran the new pdf one, then the dot_clean again and tried to copy/paste stuff again. Same story.

The Black Oil

bedlam wrote: »

After which command? Was this more than it was doing before? Assuming it was the last find command (calling chflags) you could just get it to run the command on every file and directory in echo by doing:

find /Echo -name '*' -exec bash -c 'chflags nouchg "$1"' -- {} \;

If I were to do that, is it just a once off thing - do the settings introduced by the code above remain in place after a shutdown/next time you log on?

I'm afraid I'm a bit technically illiterate when it comes to this more nitty gritty side of Macs, hence number the posts.

The Black Oil

OK, gave that a shot and no joy, unfortunately.

In the event that it did work, would it mean you wouldn't really have to fiddle with settings of folders and files in the future, i.e., the problem outlined in the thread would likely go? I know not everything can be so 'clean' when it comes to computers, though.

brav

If you are having trouble via terminal can't you try GUI instead?

Go to parent folder ( not mac hd or users but folder you created ), highlight folder, go to file > get info

Unlock padlock in bottom right corner, set permissions the way you want then click on cog wheel to apply to all enclosed items

The Black Oil

Thanks Brav, I think I tried that.

Found a partial solution.

Quit Dropbox
Copy the college folder into the Dropbox folder
Relaunch Dropbox and let it sync up, sorted.
Not ideal, but it's something.