MacOS – CLI unable to access files on external disk

command linemacospermission

I have an external disk onto which I backed up my macOS 10.13 laptop, and now I want to pull some of the files off to use on my newer macOS 10.15 laptop.

I can both see and open (read/write) the files I want via the Finder. But I cannot see them nor open them via the command line. Permissions look right, according to Finder, i.e. my macOS 10.15 user owns the files and has read/write permissions.

What's preventing the CLI from accessing these files?

Image below shows very bottom of Finder window overlapping terminal window running Bash. Note how Finder displays filename and modify date, but file is invisible to Bash. Next image shows Finder Info for that file.

Best Answer

Apple sandbox privacy now applies to the terminal app as well as specific binaries in some cases.

As a developer, you can script for this.

Even Apple tools need to be granted access and you have to approve it with a click.

Until you grant permission to look at the disk, the permissions will show incorrectly.

Related Solutions

Permission Problems for copied files from NAS

Sounds like a permission problem. I had a similar issue. Files created by one user in two groups (administrator & user) on NAS were not being able to read by users only in the user group. I tried reseting ownership/permissions using File Station from DiskStation and did nothing. I figured something was wrong with root folder permissions on shared folder - and yes, they were owned by root and 777 chmod.

I've managed to fix this by:

On the Synology - control panel - win/mac/nfs - goto Mac File Serivce (AFP) and turn off Apply default UNIX permissions (Mac file services enabled) - root of your problem

log on to NAS via ssh, go to most root shared folder and do

chown -R nobody:users shared_folder/
chmod -R 755 shared_folder/

used info from here, here and here.

MacOS – I created a ‘Image from Folder” using Disk Utility, with Encryption and Files are Invisible

The 'Image from Folder' will use the existing ownership/permissions of the folder and files.

First off, is the disk image a read/write image? Are you able to add new files to it? If not, the instructions below won't work if it is read-only.

The permissions you've listed, "-rw-r--r--@", mean that the file is read and writable by the owner and readable by everyone else. The @ at the end means there are extended attributes to the file, which might include some kind of invisibility option. You would have to get a directory listing with -@ to show the attribute keys. For example, here is a listing showing an image that I manually set to be hidden.

$ ls -l@
-rw-r--r--@ 1 insom  staff  - 64832 Dec  6 18:56 FunnyImage.png
    com.apple.FinderInfo       32

If all your files also have a com.apple.FinderInfo attribute, use Terminal to change into the directory of the files and run the following command to unhide the files.

chflags nohidden *

Now, if your dir listing doesn't show the com.apple.FinderInfo attribute then they are not being hidden using this method but something else is going on.

Have you tried rebooting? What about copying the disk image to a different computer and mounting it?

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Permission Problems for copied files from NAS

MacOS – I created a ‘Image from Folder” using Disk Utility, with Encryption and Files are Invisible

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