File sharing not working for any new accounts

Question

I am using the latest version of Mavericks. For every new account I set up (Sharing, Administrative, Standard) trying to set up file sharing on a directory fails. When I set up the account, select a directory (on the boot drive or on an external drive) to share and do a get Info it always shows "Fetching..." on the new account. If I try to set that directory to share from an account in SysPref>Sharing when I click on the directory and try to set the account to share, even though the account shows up in the list of accounts to use, when I select any new account it does NOT show up as selected for sharing. It is as though the new account isn't quite being correctly set by the system. If I launch and look at any new account in WorkGroup manager they appear to be normal but cannot be used in File Sharing. I am really scratching my head on this, since I do everything I should to share a directory and all new accounts are just not working.
Any ideas or suggestions???????????????  HELP HELP!

Answer 1

hi there,
that error message sounds like you placed a shared folder within a parent folder that is not shared. It also can help to boot into Recovery Mode (pressing Command and R simultanously when hearing the startup tune), launch Disk Utility, select the disk containing your OSX installation (usually named Macintosh HD) and choose Verify Disk Permissions. Should any problems be reported select Repair Disk Permissions. Once that is finished, reboot normally.
Though unlikely, it might have happened during all the folder removing and readding that some Permissions are out of sync. So checking these Permissions is merely a precaution
Once you are back in "normal" OSX using your admin account, try this:
Open Terminal from the Utilites folder
enter the following commands one line at a time:
mkdir /Users/Shared/Family
mkdir /Users/Shared/Family/Movies
mkdir /Users/Shared/Family/Mom
chown -R <placeholder> /Users/Shared/Family           
chmod -R 755 /Users/Shared/Family
Be sure to replace <placeholder> with your account's short name (no brackets!)
Now open System Preferences and select Sharing
Select File Sharing from the left pane
Click on the little plus and add /Users/Shared/Family to your shares (The subfolders are automatically included)
in the right most pane check the access privileges. They are set, so that you can read and write to those folders, while everyone else can only read. If you want everybody to have read and write privileges, use 777 instead of 755 within the terminal last command.
Now the other computers should be able to see and use the shared folder you just created.
If you create individual user accounts on your machine for every family member you want to access the shared folders, you can choose far more sophisticated levels of access privileges.
Hope this helps,
Chris