Troubleshooting & How-Tos šŸ“” šŸ” Linux

Mac OS X Finder Deleting Files on a Linux Share

Last week I connected to my Linux desktop from my Mac laptop, and Finder wouldnā€™t let me copy files over to the Linux box. Even stranger, it would delete the original file on the share after stating that it didnā€™t have permission to access it!

The error message it kept popping up was:

The operation canā€™t be completed because you donā€™t have permission to access some of the items.

So it didnā€™t have permission to access or save the items, but it had permission to delete them? Clearly the error message wasnā€™t telling the whole story!

Even stranger: if I opened a file with an application like TextWrangler or NeoOffice, they had no problem saving it! It was only Finder that had the problem!

Now, Iā€™ve successfully transferred files back and forth between these computers many times before, but I had changed two things recently:

  • Upgraded the Linux box to Fedora 13.
  • Installed the Mac OS X 10.6.4 update to Snow Leopard.

I didnā€™t have much luck searching online, maybe because I was looking for the wrong terms. The closest I came up with were discussions like this one, but they all involved a server using netatalk or other AFP file sharing implementations. Iā€™ve been using samba (Windows-Style SMB shares) on the Linux box ever since I had some problems with Netatalk and decided that since the Mac would connect via Samba, I wouldnā€™t worry about it.

I idly posted the problem on Twitter. My brother replied that heā€™d run into the same problem (on Ubuntu, IIRC), and suggested turning off Unix extensions in Samba. That meant opening up /etc/samba/smb.conf on the Linux box and adding the following line to the ā€œFilesystem Optionsā€ section:

unix extensions = no

I restarted Samba on the Linux box, and that was it. The Mac was able to copy files over without any errors!

I hope this post helps someone else solve the same problem.