problem renaming/deleting files on other 'volumes' (OSX)

Terry Judd tsj at unimelb.edu.au
Wed Mar 9 21:00:10 EST 2005


Hi Frank - this shouldn't be a problem as, according to a 'get info' on 
the affected files and folders I'm the owner and have read and write 
access. Having said that, I'm sometimes able to get rename working if I 
set the permissions for all users to read and write - but as I said, 
that's only sometimes.

I've just checked and I've checked 'ignore ownership' on the entire 
volume. I'm at a bit of a loss.

Cheers,

Terry...

> Do you also have write permission to the directory *containing* the 
> file(s) and/or folder(s) you are trying to rename and/or delete?
>
> Even if you are the owner of the containing directory, make sure you 
> have write permission (if you are the owner you can give this to 
> yourself), since you need that in order to rename/delete contained 
> items.
>
> Think of it this way (UNIX, and thus OS X, does):
>
> Since the 'directory' is essentially a 'list' of files and file 
> equivalents (directories, named pipes, "special files" representing 
> devices, etc.), the contained items are separate entities, but the 
> *name* of the item is stored in the directory itself, meaning that to 
> change the name you must be able to change the directory.
>
> In UNIX (and thus in OS X if using a UFS file system, the permissions 
> work the same if using HFS), it is possible for one file to be pointed 
> to by multiple directory entries; each directory entry pointing to the 
> file is called a "hard link," and the file maintains a count of how 
> many hard links point to it.  The file is deleted when that count 
> reaches zero.  So to delete a file, you delete the directory entry 
> pointing to it, which means modifying the directory.



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