In retrospect, I could have solved my problem more quickly and easily.
This solution (for OS X 10.4 and of uncertain applicability to my
10.5.8) seems more complicated than it has to be:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24068
There was a simple answer to my original question of how to change
permissions for a Home folder globally. It's there in the interface as
well as available through commands in Terminal.
The problem: Applications were not saving files as they should have,
for lack of "disk space" - on a partition with 400+ GB of free space.
This lack was lack of space in my Home folder, caused by a max
capacity imposed by FileVault when the Home folder was originally
created on a 40 GB hard drive, a limitation I remained unaware of as
the Home folder migrated from HD to HD and from OS to OS. When recent
work had filled my Home folder to near capacity, the problem presented
itself. Trying to disable FileVault failed because FileVault required
more disk space - evidently more Home folder space - just to allow it
to be disabled. So my admin account was both crippled by FileVault and
also unable to disable it. Escape to a new admin account and Home
folder free of FileVault was the only option, but this new account had
to be, for obvious reasons, the spitting image of the old, sans
FileVault.
The solution as it could have been:
1. Back up the existing Home folder.
2. Create a new admin account (with the same password as the existing
one, to avoid confusion). Don't log into it.
3. Select the existing Home folder and Get Info. Click on the lock,
enter password, add your new admin account to the Sharing &
Permissions list, give it Read & Write privileges, click the Action
button and select Apply to enclosed items, click OK on the dialog box
that appears, wait a bit for the process to finish, click on the lock
again.
4. Log into the new admin account and repeat Step 3, seeing to it that
both your admin accounts have Read & Write privileges. Log out.
5. Log into the old admin account. Copy all the folders within the
Home folder and paste them onto or drag them into the new admin
account home folder. It might be necessary to trash the existing
folders in the new Home folder first. At the very least, there will be
some dialog boxes to answer "Replace" to.
At this stage, MobileMe comes in handy. What was there in your old
Home is now there in the new, mostly, but it's still not quite the
same. What you're after is to restore the old Home folder in the new
one precisely in terms of how things look and behave. There might be
other shortcuts to getting this done and avoiding the labor-intensive
process of resetting all sorts of preferences manually and one by one.
6. Go to System Preferences>MobileMe>Sync. Check every box. Go to
Advanced, and sync everything from your computer to Mobile Me.
7. Log into the new admin account and repeat Step 6, except that now
you're syncing everything from MobileMe to your computer.
8. Restart and log into the new account. Everything should be as it
was with old account, except that your Home folder won't show a
"capacity" in Get Info. You can even enable FileVault for your new
account now, if you want to. I wouldn't.
9. When you've satisfied yourself that everything is there and looking
and behaving as it should in your new admin account, delete the old
one. I think it's safe to change your account name back to the old
familiar one, too. Optional. In any case, you have a backup of the old
Home folder in case anything has gone awry.
It's so weird that FileVault can allow for a situation where, in order
to disable it, you need more disk space than even exists on the sparse
image disk that FileVault itself created, so weird I'm not even going
to try to understand. I'm just done with FileVault.
What I'd like to understand is what the following from Terminal means:
Password:
bash-3.2# ls -l /Users
total 16
-rw-r--r--@ 1 _unknown _unknown 6148 Jun 14 04:25 .DS_Store
drwx------@ 4 Sean Sean 136 Jun 13 22:49 .Sean
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 May 31 2008 .localized
drwxr-xr-x@ 15 Anyone Anyone 510 Apr 25 19:12 Anyone
drwx------+ 32 Sean Sean 1156 Jun 14 16:55 Sean
drwx------+ 19 Sean2 wheel 646 Jun 14 16:49 Sean2
drwxrwxrwt 9 root wheel 306 Apr 16 18:42 Shared
bash-3.2#
Questions abound. It looks too complicated to be quite as it probably
should be.
"drwx------+" describes type of permission, I think.
"19 Sean2 wheel 646" I'm not sure about. "19" might be an
identifier or an actual quantity of something. No, it must be a
quantity. "646" might be a number of directories or folders. What is
"wheel"?
Don't know what "_unknown" is about, or why Sean2 has "wheel" and Sean
doesn't. What is "total 16"? 16 of what?
Some things are looking clearer. 19 + 9 + 4 = 32, and "32 Sean". (1156
+ 136) = (646 x 2). I think I grasp the significance of the foregoing.
Sean Carroll
[email protected]
Power Mac G4 AGP "Sawtooth" 1.6 GHz, 2 GB RAM, SATA 750 GB hard drive,
Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 & Tiger 10.4.11,
Gigabit Ethernet & M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI cards, ATI Radeon 9800
Pro 128 MB AGP
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