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This seems like a total abuse to the Unix file system ownership principals. The only reason I can think of that Apple may have implemented this is that non-technical users were probably fighting issues with ownership and Apple wanted a simple solution. For the technical user (i.e. someone who understands Unix), I see no reason to ever enable this. Am I missing something?

Nimesh Neema
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Rumboogy
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1 Answers1

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It's for read/write access on shared drives.

For example, if you have a shared USB drive the permissions will most likely not match your particular credentials. For you to read/write to that drive, Apple gives you this functionality.

Additionally, given that you must be an Admin to enable/disable this, it doesn't exactly "abuse" the UNIX file system ownership principals.

Community
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Allan
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  • You don't need this mechanism to enabled convenient shared drives. This can be fully handled using traditional Unix ownership and permissions. This just seems like a lazy shortcut that could cause trouble. – Rumboogy Sep 28 '18 at 18:26
  • The man page for diskutil says "When ownership is disabled, Owner and Group ID settings on FSOs appear to the user and programs as the current user and group instead of their actual on-disk settings, in order to make it easy to use a plug-in disk of which the user has physical possession.". So it seems like this is just a simple mechanism for shared drives as you suggest. – Rumboogy Sep 28 '18 at 18:53
  • Owner and Group ID's are stored as digits not as strings, so a filesystem mounted as noowners would be available to any user mounting the filesystem. Administrators can configure filesystems to mount owners enabled through the volinfo.database. Also read man vsdbutil. – fd0 Sep 28 '18 at 19:11
  • unix allows the equivalent, just not as a temporary permission. "If it's in your hands, you own it". Win also - 'Take Ownership'. – Tetsujin Sep 28 '18 at 20:01