Luckily I have everything backed up so no data loss, but I did reinstall OS X 10.6, and also copied a ton of data around, rearranging my drives somewhat. (I dismantled a raid0 array I had configured because the hard drive failure scared me a little ).Īnyway, the data I copied now lists its permissions differently. New folders created on the system drive yield the first type listed above by default, while new folders created on other internal drives yield the second by default. I want to reset permissions on all the files on my non-system drives to the same set, but which is correct? I'm relatively comfortable setting permissions using the terminal, and all data is redundantly backed-up to drives that are not physically in the computer right now, so it's safe anyway. My summarized-form question is: What are the correct default permissions settings for files on a.) the system drive (but not system files, like in the system folder) and b.) internal drives that are not the system drive. Hmmm well I never got any replies, but for the good of the group, I'll share the end of my story. The first thing I tried was using an application called BatChmod to set the permissions across the affected (non-system! tutt) drives back to what I perceived was their rightful setting. User: Me RWX Group: Staff R-X Everyone: Everyone R-X. At the same time, I set BatChmod to clear the ACLs on all of those files.

That seemed to work fine, and did indeed restore the permissions on all of those files to the norm. However, I got nervous about having reset the ACLs, in case any of that data was needed. still not sure if the next was necessary, but. I then went to my still-existent backup, grabbed all of the unchanged files, enabled 'Ignore ownership on this volume', and re-copied them into freshly-wiped destinations. This also changed the permissions correctly and preserved the ACLs, so far as I can tell. Not sure why copying files from a corrupted system's backup storage should put OS X in such a tizzy. Hope others have good luck in these issues.

BatChmod was very helpful and worked swiftly, but it also had great potential to f*** your life up if you didn't know how to use it.

Os x batchmod