Permissions Hate

M

mindbend

Registered
First, I did do some searching on the forums and didn't find a suitable answer, so here I am with yet another permissions thread.

I understand how permissions work, more or less, so no issues there. My problem is that I hate the whole concept and want to find a way around it.

I understand its purpose, so I don't need a history lesson on why we have it, all I want is a way around it.

For example, I have a small office with four employees and six Mac workstations. We are all networked to each other as well as to a central file server (just an old Mac with file sharing turned on and a big hard drive in it).

Part of our workflow, naturally, is to periodically make folders either locally or on the remote file server. We then share these folders as we push and pull files to and fro. The problem is that we are constantly battling permissions issues since the creator of a folder is the only one with full access, right? You have to turn around and set your newly created folder to full access if you want it wide open, right?

I find this endlessly annoying. I want wide open access to any folder or file on our network by any user to any other user. Is this possible? I do not have a server version of OS X.

I know I can set up volumes to ignore permissions, and that's fine for our file server volume, which is not a startup volume, but for all the other times we make local folders and such I am getting really tired of changing permissions on files and folders.

In short, what is my best option for providing wide open permissions across our network? What if we all logged in as Root? That probably helps locally, but not necessarily when accessing another machine over the network, right? Is Root as scary as it sounds? Wouldn't you kind of have to be an idiot to delete a critical file as Root?

Is there any way to make my whole computer (every stinking folder and file) full read write to everyone else?

Thanks for any help.

Sincerely,
Person who freaking hates changing permissions all the time
 
I dont know.But you could make a folder set permissions keep it empty and every time you need to make a new folder just duplicate and rename it.
 
I think that small workgroups are a problem Apple needs to tackle. Soon.
 
mindbend, Rather than complaining, you need to learn how to use your computer. System 6 is gone, never to return. You and your colleagues should not be trying to share files within your personal accounts. If you want to share files, Apple builds provides the facility in MacOS X. The /Macintosh HD/Users/Shared/ directory is something you should look into.
 
No but it has the sticky bit set. Basically anybody can create something there but only the owner can delete it. Really what you need to do in the world of permissions is create a group to which all the employes belong and then make sure that files are created as part of the group with the proper umask.

How to do it form the slick UI, I'll leave for someone else, I just do it the old unix way myself.
 
That's what I meant by Apple has to tackle this. I mean: Three colleagues working on Word and Excel files... If they have to go and set permissions for their files everytime they upload them to a server or to another person's computer... It shouldn't be this hard. TinkerTool has a way of changing the umask, but that's a hack, really, and I don't think we should set up Macs so they _always_ create 777- or 666-files. That'd be bad...
 
I know full well about shared directories and that's not a solution, it's a clumsy workaround. It's a restrictive approach that doesn't account for a variety of situations. And by the sounds of it, I'm not alone in my disdain for the current model.

Thanks for the feedback all. I might Tinker with Tinker Tool.
 
Yeah. TinkerTool is what you want. Every new file you can have full read and write permissions. Install and configure TinkerTool on all your Macs and you'll be happy. We had to do this at my work when we were sharing storage via Xsan.
 
Well setting the sticky group bit on a directory like I am suggesting is a bit different they just a shared directory, but there are still holes in that approach. It just gets you correct behavior in 87% of situations.
 
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