Another Mass Permissions Change Topic

Question

Alright - my wife set up my Christmas Present and after receiving it I wanted to change my shortuser name to match the one I used on our other systems to ease transition of files and ownership. I followed the instructions in the Information Bank about doing so - logged into root, renamed the home folder for the old name to the new name, generated new user account using new name, everything gets converted, then deleted old name.
Problem is, I have a LOT of files now in the Applications folders (specifically all of my preference files for World of Warcraft) that have "_Unknown" as the owner, and so I can't write over my old preference files, save new settings, macros, addon data, etc.
I tried selecting the enveloping folders, making myself owner, giving myself read-write access, then telling it to apply the changes to everything enclosed...BUT THAT DIDN'T WORK. I think this is because though it will adjust settings, it can't change ownership from _Unknown to me.
SO...how do I, en masse, convert everything with _Unknown as owner to have me as owner?
EDIT: As an aside - I have gone through and manually changed some of the files to have me as the owner, in case that makes a difference.
Message was edited by: Victor Aldridge

Answer 1

Victor Aldridge wrote:
Alright - my wife set up my Christmas Present and after receiving it I wanted to change my shortuser name to match the one I used on our other systems to ease transition of files and ownership. I followed the instructions in the Information Bank about doing so - logged into root, renamed the home folder for the old name to the new name, generated new user account using new name, everything gets converted, then deleted old name.
Problem is, I have a LOT of files now in the Applications folders (specifically all of my preference files for World of Warcraft) that have "_Unknown" as the owner, and so I can't write over my old preference files, save new settings, macros, addon data, etc.
that is not a problem. none of the preference files are stored in the Applications themselves. they are stored in your home directory which is already taken care of. same goes for your macros, addons data etc. and you don't need to worry about updating apps. any application that uses an installer to update runs the installer as root so the wonership on those files is irrelevant. and if an app doesn't use an installer (say, firefox) and is installed by drag and drop then you can just trash the old version and put the new one in when needed. no need to change ownership for that either. so the best thing here is to leave things alone.
I tried selecting the enveloping folders, making myself owner, giving myself read-write access, then telling it to apply the changes to everything enclosed...
No! NEVER use "apply to enclosed items on ANY system created folders, your startup drive or the time machine drive. that includes folders like your Documents folder, your Desktop folder etc. use it only on folders you made yourself. system created folders often have hidden ACLs and using 'apply to enclosed items" on them will propagate those ACLs to everything inside and buy you a lot of trouble. in particular, the main Applications folder has "everyone deny delete" ACLs which you've propagated to everything inside. not good. we need to undo the damage.
run the following terminal commands (copy and paste please)
sudo chmod -RN /Applications
sudo chmod +a "everyone deny delete" /Applications /Applications/Utilities
you'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) after the first command. that's normal.
BUT THAT DIDN'T WORK. I think this is because though it will adjust settings, it can't change ownership from _Unknown to me.
SO...how do I, en masse, convert everything with _Unknown as owner to have me as owner?
EDIT: As an aside - I have gone through and manually changed some of the files to have me as the owner, in case that makes a difference.
Message was edited by: Victor Aldridge