I have disabled SIP, I have read/write permissions with terminal, but not with Finder. What causes this

catalinafinderpermissionsip

System: macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Background: I've been a *nix user for many years. I use a remote Linux server where the root directory is used (i.e. there are folders where users can r/w such as /data and /analyses ), and I've used macOS in the same way until now. I got a new MacBook from my workplace this year. I administer the machine, so I am able to change anything that root can.

In the interest of continuing to use the file organization system on our remote server, I have disabled SIP and I'm mounting / with read/write on each boot (similarly to how it is done here). I can work in the /data and /analyses folders using the Terminal with no issues, but when it comes to using Finder, this is not the case. Creating and deleting folders and files is not possible with Finder. This is not the case with other GUI apps (for example, I'm able to use a text editor such as Sublime to edit plain text files in these folders, or create and save new ones into the directory of my choosing).

Issue: When I use Finder to move or modify these files (for example, dragging a file to Trash) I get a warning message: "file" can't be modified or deleted because it's required by macOS. I can delete or modify these files with other apps, including Terminal, but for convenience sake I'd like some help finding a solution to this issue with Finder (for example, is there something I could change w/r/t Finder's permissions, or with the permissions set by macOS for the directories I'm working in).

What I've already tried: changing the file and folder permissions/ownership with chmod and chown, with no effect on Finder's behavior

p.s. Unless you are certain it will directly help to solve this issue with Finder, thank you in advance for leaving out any lectures about why I should re-enable SIP, I've already heard them all. 🙂

Best Answer

If you need to create directories off the root, the best option is to use firmlinks, which can be configured using /etc/synthetic.conf. From the manual page:

...
synthetic.conf is intended to be used for creating mount points at / 
(e.g. for use as NFS mount points in enterprise deployments) and symbolic
links (e.g. for creating a package manager root without modifying the
system volume).  synthetic.conf is read by apfs.util(8) during early sys-
tem boot.
...

If you create /data and /analyses elsewhere and then have the links managed by synthetic.conf, you should be able to avoid disabling SIP and be able to access those directories from Finder.

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