Hi Esther, I am writing to give you more details. The drive I am using is in Mac OS extended journaled format. The two computers in question are my macbook, and an older desktop running the latest Ubuntu release. I know windows cannot read this type of drive at all, but Ubuntu can read it just fine. Note that I do not want to write anything to the drive from Ubuntu, and this is not possible anyway. But I do want to be able to read all the files, as I have some videos I want to share between both machines. Also, I want to be assured that, if my mac ever goes down, I won't be locked out of my drive. The fact that, in ubuntu, the files show up as not accessible is troublesome, though I guess to be completely fair I should try my drive on another mac. Ubuntu and mac handle the administrator account somewhat differently from what I understand.
Is this correct? John On Dec 12, 2009, at 1:25 PM, Esther wrote: > Hi John, > > You don't mention what type of hard drive format you're using for the > external drive or the the operating systems of the other computers you > are using. However, I'll give you what I believe is a piece of the > answer, and someone who has more hard drives and computers than I do > can probably fill you in on the rest. Under unix and linux operating > systems file permissions are set at three levels: user, group, and > world. You can add users and create accounts so that users belong to > the same group, and you can set some file permissions so that members > of the same group have access, while the rest of the world does not. > So, other user accounts created on the same computer might have access > privileges to the hard drive that an account from another computer > might not. Furthermore, usually only the owner of a file or directory > (or someone with Administrator privileges who logs in as a superuser) > can change the permissions on a file. I don't know how you log into > your account on the Mac or on the other computer. You could be using > your Mac from a regular user account or, more likely, an account with > Administrator privileges. When you log into the other computer, which > might have a different operating system, you may or may not have > access as a superuser. But, in any case, since those files weren't > created under the second system, their protection would not generally > automatically be set to let them be read by "the outside world". I > should add that since I'm the only user of my Mac laptop, I've done > limited exploration of changing account permissions from the default > categories available through the GUI. I'd have to experiment from > command-line arguments in Terminal, and do things the way they would > work on other unix and linux systems. However, there's not enough > information in your originally posted question to give a detailed > answer, since we don't know about the operating system, your original > external drive format, and your account access status on the two > machines, just as a starter. > > HTH > > Cheers, > > Esther > > John J Herzog wrote: > >> Hi listers, >> I have a question about external hard drives and permissions. As a >> backup, I would normally copy the folders from my user on the mac, >> i.e. documents, videos, etc. to the external hard drive. When >> attempting to transfer my files to another computer, I was told I >> did not have the permissions to display contents of the folders. >> I know how to fix this, as you can plug the drive into the original >> mac, press command I, and change the permissions settings from >> within that screen. But there's still something I don't understand. >> If other computers do not have permission to the user folders on the >> drive, how was I able to access my stuff after performing a clean >> install of snow leopard? In other words, why didn't I get the error >> that I had no permissions when trying to reload things onto the >> newly formatted internal hard drive of my macbook? >> This puzzles me. Why didn't this error come up with, essentially a >> new Mac OS, yet it prevents me from moving things to other computers? >> >> John >> >> -- >> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "MacVisionaries" group. >> To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com >> . >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en >> . >> >> > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
