On 3/12/14, 9:55 pm, Gary K. Olson wrote: > Can anyone tell me what the ‘+’ symbol at the end of a file or > directories permissions is supposed to mean? It obviously means > something more than it used to. Possibly someone can clarify the > new extended meaning or ask Apple what is going on.
According to the man page for ls under my installation of 10.9.2: "If the file or directory has extended attributes, the permissions field printed by the -l option is followed by a '@' character. Otherwise, if the file or directory has extended security information (such as an access control list), the permissions field printed by the -l option is followed by a '+' character." So the '+' indicates extended security information associated with a file or directory. I'm not sure what that extended information might be other than an ACL. There is no correlation on my system between files/directories with a '+' and ones that are hidden or invisible. My /sw does not have a '+' after the permissions, and it is not hidden in either my Finder or Path Finder. Out of curiosity, I looked at ls -l for ~ as well as / on my system. The only items in ~ for me that have a '+' after the permissions are Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Library, Movies, and Pictures (in other words, only System-created folders, but not all such folders, since Applications, Music, and all of the dot-directories in ~ are missing the '+'). Similarly, the items in my / with a '+' are .MobileBackups, Applications, Library, and System--the same ones you found there on your system, except for /sw. In /Applications, I found a '+' on App Store.app, Calendar.app, Contacts.app, DVD Player.app, Dictionary.app, FaceTime.app, Game Center.app, Image Capture.app, iTunes.app, Mail.app, Messages.app, Notes.app, Photo Booth.app, Preview.app, QuickTime Player.app, Reminders.app, Safari.app, Stickies.app, System Preferences.app, Time Machine.app, and the Utilities directory. So a not-terribly-thorough check on my system shows only Apple-installed items with a '+'. I wonder if your /sw has it because Fink was installed directly onto 10.9.2, whereas mine was already in place when I updated to 10.9.2. As for fixing it, it would appear that an ACL was added to /sw, so you would want to edit that ACL to allow you access. It's unlikely that repairing permissions would help this, since /sw isn't created by the OS and so shouldn't have an entry in the list of "correct" permissions. I'm sure there's a way to edit an ACL from the command line, but I've never tried to do it that way; I use TinkerTool System to view and edit ACLs. Someone a bit more versed in the command line would have to weigh in on doing it in Terminal. Mark D. McKean qpa...@quantumpanda.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. Written by three acclaimed leaders in the field, this first edition is now available. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/13534_NeoTech _______________________________________________ Fink-users mailing list Fink-users@lists.sourceforge.net List archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.os.macosx.fink.user Subscription management: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-users
