Dropbox Drops 'Execute' Permissions

(4 posts)

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Timothy L.
Member
Posts: 18

I am developing a shell script. Since I want to use the same version on all my Macs, I have saved it in ~/Dropbox/ and issued chmod 755.

However, the 'execute' bit keeps getting dropped off when it syncs.

Posted 1 year ago #
Michael N.
Dropboxer
Posts: 2428

Timothy,

Dropbox doesn't actually track most extended attributes for any operating system, the file comes down as a standard read/writeable file. The problem here is that the "file system" on the cloud isn't ntfs, or ext3, or zfs, or hfs +, so there is no analogous part to the execute bit. or file permissions or any of that extra stuff, but all your bits are there. But OS X supports ACLs that you can set on a directory so that all files created there inherit the same permissions, so drop your script into a folder, and set an ACL for it.

Posted 1 year ago #
Steve H.
Pro User
Posts: 51

I suppose it's a similar problem to how certain characters are allowed in filenames on some filesystems but not others, only much harder, e.g. how would you possibly synchronise ACLs where the available users on each sync'd system are completely different?

Posted 1 year ago #
Brad P.
Pro User
Posts: 1

surely there can be some solution? It may not be a huge problem with one script, but what about a complex directory tree with executables littered throughout?

Posted 1 year ago #

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