[OS X TeX] OT: authorizations in Leopard

[Gary L. Gray]

On Nov 11, 2007, at 12:38 AM, Herbert Schulz wrote:

>
> On Nov 9, 2007, at 11:53 AM, Bruno Voisin wrote:
>
>> ...
>> At some point it seemed that files and folders copied from these  
>> supports couldn't be modified (they had authorizations r-xr-xr-x  
>> IIRC), but now that's gone for some reason.
>>
>> Finally, motivated by all that I attempted to repair permissions  
>> with Disk Utility. The report ended up with (approximate  
>> translation from the French):
>>
>> ACL found but not claimed on /Applications
>> ACL found but not claimed on /Library
>>
>> Googling a bit revealed that ACL are a more sophisticated way of  
>> defining and managing permissions for Unix systems, that it was  
>> present but not activated on Tiger, and that it is indeed present  
>> and activated on Leopard. I looked at some documentation but could  
>> not understand a word of it.
>>
>> It seems, however, that a way to solve the problem reported by Disk  
>> Utility is to use "sudo chmod -a# 0 <folder-name>". I have no idea  
>> what this syntax means. The tip was found on a MacBidouille user  
>> forum, quoting MacFixIt. This seems to refer to two articles:
>>
>> <http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071108091216152>
>> <http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071106085808151>
>>
>> Hence I tried:
>>
>> sudo chmod -a# 0 /Applications
>> sudo chmod -a# 0 /Library
>>
>> It suppresses indeed the warning in Disk Utility, but it does not  
>> seem to affect the authorizations problems I'm experiencing.
>>
>> Again, this is OT, but I thought that's information which might be  
>> useful in helping people decide whether or not to switch now.
>>
>> Bruno Voisin
>
>
> Howdy,
>
> I see the @ on many files also. I've run into a problem where I  
> can't write to some files even though all permissions say I can. I  
> can't make out any pattern to which files I can write and which I  
> can't. They're all in the same directory and all .tex source files  
> written in TeXShop under Tiger and before.
>
> Good Luck,
>
> Herb Schulz
> (herbs at wideopenwest.com)


I have reported this to Dick Koch and he is looking at the issue.  
Interestingly, these files can be opened and saved without any  
problems using BBEdit. It turns out that any file that behaves this  
way can be opened and saved over the "misbehaving" file via "Save  
As..." (this replaces the bad file). This has been an easy workaround  
for me until Dick finds out what is going on.

-- Gary