[X4U] Permissions, Networking and Lion

[jetlag11 at mac.com]

On Feb 7, 2012, at 5:42 PM, David Ledger wrote:

When you connect to the other Mac, if you do so as the user that owns the files and folders you want to access, there should be no problem. Copying a file across and getting an empty file means that the destination folder is writable by the user doing it, so the file is created, but the file gets permissions that don't allow the user to write the contents into it. We need to know more to diagnose the problem. Have you made any changes to try to help the situation?
===============
David - 

Thank you for your assistance. I have two Macs (that we're talking about): early MacBook (MB) running 10.6.8 where I'm user J1, and recent Mini (Mini) running 10.7.3 where I'm J2. I want to be able to freely move and modify Documents folder items between the two systems. They're connected over a local network.

(1 10.6->10.7) Today, I was sitting at Mini as J2. I remotely successfully logged into MB as J1, and J1's document folder contents displayed. I copied file J1-1 to Mini successfully but, while its permissions on J1 were rw, rw, rw, the copied file on Mini had permissions rw, rw, r. The file opened correctly on Mini & I could modify it and save it. Why did the permissions change? 

(2 10.7->10.6) Still sitting at Mini as J2 and connected to MB as J1, I tried to copy file J2-A to MB. File permissions on J2 were rw, rw, rw. Before doing this, I went downstairs to MB and changed the permissions in J1's Documents folder to rw, rw, rw and applied to enclosed items. Back upstairs to Mini. The file, J2-A, copied over at zero length. Still at Mini, I was allowed to delete J2-1 from MB without an admin password & apparently successfully. 

But when I tried to repeat the copy - copy J2-A to J1 on the MB while sitting at Mini - my admin password was required. This dialog box then appeared:
"A newer item named “20120208 Letter of Retirement.pdf” already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you’re moving?" with Keep Both Files, Stop, & Replace as the three buttons.

Clicked Replace and this appeared: "The operation can’t be completed because an item with the name “” already exists." I got rid of this, end of story - NOT. On MB, file J2-A appeared, again, and again with zero length.

(In the past, I selected Keep Both Files which would generate tens of thousands of zero length copies.)

My first conclusion is that file transfers from Lion to Snow Leopard don't work. 

My second conclusion is that I need a better understanding of permissions under Lion that I have acquired in the preceding 17 years. Or Lion has a permissions bug.

John