In short, I'd like you to open up the Aperture Library and check the permissions on the ApertureData.xml.
You can do this by:
1) Right-click on your Aperture Library and select -> Show Package Contents (be careful in here, don't mess up stuff here!)
2) Right click on ApertureData.xml and select -> Get Info.
3) at the bottom of the popup, there will be a list of the permissions for each user. YOu should be listed first and have read/write. Second is listed as your GroupID (mine is read only). Third is everyone, which should be read only.
My question is:
“What is your GroupID?”
Also list your OS.
I'm using Lion, and my GroupID is “Fetching”, otherwise known as my user as GroupID.
Ok, for some background, to my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong):
Since before Leopard, everyone had a group ID that was identical to their user. For example, if my user was “Fred”, my Group ID was also “Fred”.
Since Leopard, I believe, theGroupID for users became “Staff”. Ok, so people who migrated from before Leopard actually retained their “User as GroupID”. This was never an issue, and potentially isn't one now.
However, since Lion, if your Group ID is your user, doing a get info on a file created by you now displays “Fetching”, as if it didn't know what the GroupID is. Now there have been little consequence to this, so I wouldn't go rushing off to 'fix' this if you see it. I operated on this for the longest time in Lion, with NO repercussions. That is, I had 'Fetching” under my group ID, and I have migrated my account since Panther. There are multiple versions of a fix, and the most common one, I believe, gets rid of the “fetching” but does not do what is supposed to happen, so I don't recommend it.
Anyway for more background on this, consult this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3198307?start=30&tstart=0
Now - Why do I ask people to check?
Well, during the upgrade to my Aperture Library, I decided to do a “Repair Permissions and ACL of Home folder”. This is kind of like the Disk Utility “Repair Permissions” command, except instead of doing it for System Folder, it does it for the user folder. What it does, at least in Lion, is actually reset all the permissions for all files in your Home Folder to “User”, GroupID = Staff, and so on.
Now, this will no doubt wreak havoc on your Time MAchine folder, since it changes every file in your home folder. I did this. Now, the strange thing is, it does NOT set your GroupID to Staff, even though permissions for all files change to Staff. Again, there may be no consequence to this. However, after using Aperture for a while, it appears the ApertureData.xml appears to have a groupID listed as my User, and not Staff, where as ALL my files in my Home folder are “Staff” (and I have done another fix to change my Primary GroupID to staff.
Again no consequence, I'm just curious as to what the GroupID is listed as for the ApertureDAta.xml file for other people. Is it supposed to be “Staff”? OR your user?
You can actually check your own GroupID by opening Terminal and typing ID and hitting enter.
Thanks in advance.
I have to get back to you after my shoot and Vault update.
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
What version of Aperture are you using? I checked several different libraries and none of them had that file.
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Aperture 3.3.1
Lion 10.7.4
user - read/write
staff - read
everyone - read
It’s this way for every library I have.
My user is Davidbmoore (Me)
Davidbmoore (Me) - read/write
staff - read
everyone - read
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
Thanks, interesting.
DBMoore, I’m using Aperture 3.3.1 on 10.7.4.
So my ApertureData.xml is:
User -read/write
“Fetching” - read only
Everyone - read only.
I’ve migrated since Panther - has anyone here migrated their installation, or when did you start?
All my other files in my home folder are “Staff”, as was done when I repaired Home Folder permissions, but for whatever reason, when the ApertureData.xml gets repopulated (it should get rewritten everytime you make a change), it uses my old GroupID. Obviously, it’s getting that info from somewhere despite me manually changing my Primary GroupID to Staff.
< I decided to do a “Repair Permissions and ACL of Home folder”. This is kind of like the Disk Utility “Repair Permissions” command, except instead of doing it for System Folder, it does it for the user folder>
how did you do that and what is ACL?
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
Migrating since Panther ? - that’s asking for problem’s IMO.
Between major os upgrades I almost always backup all the user folders and manually copy the data back across once I’ve done a clean install. I’ve never had confidence in migrating accounts across os vers.
My suggestion would me to temporarily migrate to a new user - say “fred_temp” - completely delete the old user and remake it from scratch letting the os establish default permissions, user, group and UUID as it sees fit - then copy the data across again.
If you downloaded the “server” tools for user account creation and dug around you might be able to see some old reference’s in the UUID that are tripping up the acl’s enough to remap the file permissions to some unknown user …
My tuppence.
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Andrew Mumford
Yeah, that,s good advice. But I’m not really having problems, per se. I’ve hardly ever had issues generally speaking. The biggest I had was a bout of aperture not updating the .xml file thus not syncing new images to my iPad. This has since been resolved, and part of the solution is the more rigorous ‘sharing previews’ you see when closing Aperture.
Anyway, there’s no need at e moment to migrate user, but it is a good idea should I ever feel the need. (i might do it when I next get a new computer).
DVmoore - to reset home folder permissions, you need to boot from Disc or Lion
Recovery partition and run a Terminal command called ‘reset password’. This opens a dialogue box that gives you a few options.
For DB,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_control_list
In my limited understanding Access Control Lists are basically a way of adding more fine controlled granularity to the traditional unix model of User & Group permissions and ownership which are insufficient to provide full security in a “modern” multi use environment.
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Andrew Mumford
Well I learned something but was Kgoo issue resolved ?
davidbmoore@mac.com
Twitter= @davidbmoore
Scottsdale AZ
DBmoore: To clarify, there really isn’t an ‘issue’ that I can tell. I was posting more for my curiosity.
I have a long migrated user account, this leading to my GroupID being my user instead of the more modern ‘staff’. I did a home folder repair permissions, which set everything to ‘staff’, although my Primary GroupID for my user remains as my user.
I changed this manually to staff, but every time I open Aperture, it rewrites my ApertureData.xml file, but has my (I assume) old UserId in the Group.
As far as I can tell, this has no consequence, and I assume it’s pulling that information from somewhere else, as opposed to where I ‘fixed’ my Primary GroupID.
From what I understand, the GroupID for a file is normally populated not by the user, but by the Folder that it’s in. That is, it inherits the GroupID of the folder. Maybe Aperture works a little different.
Interesting. GroupIDs in OS X are a bit weird. I’ve migrated since panther for pretty much everything (though I keep my drive VERY clean even the hidden folders), and have done multiple reinstalls along the way and have finally have created a new OS from scratch this year while debugging Mountain Lion, and that’s what I’m on now. Generally, your default GroupID is ‘staff’ though many files / directories will have ‘admin’ as the group in OS X if your account has admin privileges. I highly doubt Aperture treats it’s structure any different than the rest of OS X expect for perhaps a couple files it wants special permissions on.
Generally, I wouldn’t mess with trying to change the group ID since it can change your permissions for the rest of OS X, and thing like loading your desktop and user account settings are based on these rather than user names. My guess it that you still have an old user ID in your account. To check go to the accounts pane of System Prefs and then authenticate (clicking the lock in the lower) then go to your account and right click and select ‘Advanced Options’. That will show you your GroupID. Generally, I wouldn’t worry about it since the change for Apple is probably to simply groups and keep permissions stronger, and you could change your group ID there, but that may cause problems. Whatever you do–don’t change your UserID. That will not be a pleasant one to fix… (pretty much think hours in terminal…. Changing *every* *single* *file* in your directory.)
Micahel Ball: yeah, I hear you!
It was just weird that when I did a repair Home Folder permission in Lion, it changed all files (bar one, lol) to “Staff”, yet did not make me a member of the staff group.
I used the Core Services Utility to make me “Staff” (which does change it in the System Preferences), and just in case, added myself back to my now Group named after my user.
I know there are fixes that add the USer to Staff, or otherwise add the user to the Staff group, but that’s not how Lion does it. There are multiple ways of belonging to “Staff”, and by default, users aren’t listed under membership, rather they just have their own Primary Group ID as staff. It seems the end result would be similar, but the fixes out there aren’t how Lion does it generally. I think.
Yeah….I’m not sure what’s with Lion (or even OS X in general) because the tools for checking group membership don’t usually list all the users -which is totally non-helpful.
It still is interesting that it it appears to really be only one file…