2

On a recent support call I was asked to run the following command:

sudo chmod -R -N ~/Library/Containers/com.someco.someapp/

but on further examination I see that that directory contains a subfolder with the following contents:

...
lrwxr-xr-x   1 Orome  staff     19 Feb 27  2019 Desktop@ -> ../../../../Desktop
lrwxr-xr-x   1 Orome  staff     21 Feb 27  2019 Downloads@ -> ../../../../Downloads
lrwxr-xr-x   1 Orome  staff     18 Feb 27  2019 Movies@ -> ../../../../Movies
lrwxr-xr-x   1 Orome  staff     17 Feb 27  2019 Music@ -> ../../../../Music
lrwxr-xr-x   1 Orome  staff     20 Feb 27  2019 Pictures@ -> ../../../../Pictures
...

What did this command do? What ACL's have I removed? If I run into trouble is there a simple way to restore things to be as they should be?

I'd like to believe that I have nothing to worry about (that no symbolic links are followed); but it's unclear to then why this would have been output by the command:

chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file .com.apple.containermanagerd.metadata.plist: Operation not permitted
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file AddressBook: Operation not permitted
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file Filters: No such file or directory
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file Calendars: Operation not permitted
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file com.apple.security.plist: No such file or directory
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file com.apple.security_common.plist: No such file or directory
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file KeyBindings: No such file or directory
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file People: No such file or directory
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file Mail: Operation not permitted
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file Compositions: No such file or directory
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file Input Methods: No such file or directory
chmod: Failed to clear ACL on file Downloads: Operation not permitted
orome
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1 Answers1

2

There should be no effect on the symlinked directories. From the man page:

-P    If the -R option is specified, no symbolic links are followed. This is the default.

grg
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    So -P is the default and thus by default no symbolic links are followed? – orome Oct 11 '23 at 19:27
  • (I ask partly because I got a bunch of asks to allow Terminal access to all kinds of things and allowed at least a few. Not sure why it would have asked if it wasn't following the links.) – orome Oct 11 '23 at 19:30
  • Also added some details about messages I got to the OP. – orome Oct 12 '23 at 14:29