Lost Permissions Can’t Delete Folder

deletingfinderpermission

I accidentally ran a PHP script that creates a directory with permissions 0777 and I am now unable to delete this directory. Any help to delete it would be appreciated, I have inserted a picture of the directory info below.

Best Answer

If you're on an admin account, you should be able to click the lock, supply password, then click the + sign & add yourself as read/write.

If it won't let you do that, then try on the next folder up the hierarchy, setting permissions to at least add yourself as read & write, then click the 'gearbox' icon & 'apply to all enclosed items'.

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MacOS – Permissions for new files in shared directory

You can't do this with traditional POSIX-style permissions, but you can with inheritable access control entries. To allow read+write access for the entire "staff" group to everything in /Users/Shared/reallyshared, you'd use:

sudo chmod -R +a "staff allow list,add_file,search,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" /Users/Shared/reallyshared

The file_inherit,directory_inherit part means that this access control entry will automatically be added to new files & folders created inside this folder, but it doesn't automatically apply to items already there (that's why I added the -R flag to chmod -- that applies it to everything currently within the folder), and it won't be applied to items created somewhere else and then moved into this folder (I don't know of a way around this, sorry).

Unable to delete a file

Try deleting interactively to avoid deleting too much since these characters match one or many/no characters - you can answer y or n as needed as each file comes up for deletion...

e.g.

sudo rm -i 2011.09.0?*

If you can't get the wildcard right, move everything else out of the folder in question, go one directory level up and rm -r <foldername>.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Permissions for new files in shared directory

Unable to delete a file

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