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deletion of a file depends on folder ownership & permissions
Authored by: Andrew Fletcher on Sun, Sep 2 2007 at 3:03AM PDT
The file I was trying to delete was in a folder that had the correct permissions when set up by admin. The problem being that ticking the "ignore ownership" button changes the perceived ownership. Here's a before and after (using ls -lR /Volumes/hfsplus). The file I managed to delete as fred was admin.txt which is in /Users/admin which was not writable by fred as set up.

ls -lR /Volumes/hfsplus by user admin with "ignore ownership" not ticked.
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 1024 Sep 1 08:30 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 2 Sep 1 08:15 Desktop DF
drwxr-xr-x 6 admin admin 204 Sep 1 08:33 Users

/Volumes/hfsplus/Users:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 fred admin 102 Sep 1 08:15 fred
drwxr-xr-x 2 visitor admin 68 Sep 1 08:13 visitor
drwxr-xr-x 4 admin admin 136 Sep 1 08:12 admin

/Volumes/hfsplus/Users/fred:
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 fred admin 7234 Oct 2 2005 fred.xml

/Volumes/hfsplus/Users/visitor:

/Volumes/hfsplus/Users/admin:
total 24
-rw-r--r-- 1 admin admin 11224 Jun 10 2006 admin.txt

ls -lR /Volumes/hfsplus as fred after ticking the "ignore ownership" (as fred).
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 fred fred 1024 Sep 1 08:30 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r-- 1 fred fred 2 Sep 1 08:15 Desktop DF
drwxr-xr-x 6 fred fred 204 Sep 1 08:33 Users

/Volumes/hfsplus/Users:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 fred fred 102 Sep 1 08:15 fred
drwxr-xr-x 2 fred fred 68 Sep 1 08:13 visitor
drwxr-xr-x 4 fred fred 136 Sep 1 08:12 admin

/Volumes/hfsplus/Users/fred:
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 fred fred 7234 Oct 2 2005 fred.xml

/Volumes/hfsplus/Users/visitor:

/Volumes/hfsplus/Users/admin:
total 24
-rw-r--r-- 1 fred fred 11224 Jun 10 2006 admin.txt


So because fred could tick the "ignore ownership" button, he had write access to everything on the disc. I would have expected fred to be faced with a "give me an admin name and password" dialogue when he ticked the button as he is a standard user, but that dialogue did not come up.



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