April 21, 2006 7:52 AM PDT

Mac OS X 10.4.6 Special Report: Server volumes cannot be written to -- fixes

by CNET staff

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Several readers have notied an issue where, after updating to Mac OS X 10.4.6, volumes mounted remotely from Mac OS X 10.3.x servers are read-only.

One reader writes:

"There seem to be problems accessing an Mac OS X 10.3 Server after upgrading clients to 10.4.6. It is possible to log on to the server as usual, but almost every mounted server volume is read-only. This does not happen on a client running 10.4.5, using the same credentials."

Another reader writes:

"After doing the update to Mac OS X 10.4.6 via automatic software update, the folders/sharepoint on our Mac OS X 10.3.9 Server are locked. No changes possible anymore at the top level of the sharepoint. when we go down into folders inside these sharepoints, they are ok.

"It appears the top level of the sharepoint is locked. This is confirmed when doing get info on a sharepoint, 'locked' is checked. All other access privileges are correct, according to them i should have read/write access.

"This does not appear/happen when accessing the same sharepoints with 10.4.5 clients.

"We have informed our users to not install 10.4.6 until further notice because of this."

MacFixIt reader Thomas writes:

"I installed the Mac OS X 10.4.6 combo updater for PowerPC. After the reboot, I had lost my permission to write on server-volumes. That is really bad."

Meanwhile, MacFixIt reader Robb Gibson found that, in his case, the issue only affects folders that were created by Mac OS 9:

"I had the same problem after upgrading, but it wasn?t every folder on my shared volume. After some investigating it turns out that the folders that are locked were originally created in OS 9 (or older) and shared via ASIP 6.3. Folders that were created new within OS X 10.3 and shared with OS X Server (on an Xserve) are not locked."

Solutions

Toggle "User Immutable" flag The problem, in some cases, appears to be that (on the client) the mount point of the server volume has the "User Immutable" flag set. This prevents the Finder and other applications from accessing the volume for writing.

MacFixIt reader WeirdOz has developed a solution, as follows:

Mount the server volume as usual; it appears locked on the Desktop

Open Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities)

Clear the "User Immutable" flag of the server volume's mount point using this Terminal command: chflags nouchg /Volumes/(name_of_mounted_server_volume)

The volume is now unlocked

Repeat this procedure for every server volume (and on every client, too)

WeirdOz writes:

"Strangely, this workaround seems to permanently fix the problem. I expected the server volume to be locked again when unmounting and then remounting the volume. But when logging off from the server and logging in again later, the volume still keeps being unlocked. So this procedure just needs to be done once to get rid of the problem."

Create new share on server MacFixIt reader Mitch offers another workaround that can be enacted from the server end.

Mitch writes:

"I was unable to resolve this issue from the Mac OS X 10.4.6 workstation. Instead I resolved it from the server.

"I never create a share that's the root of a hard drive; this was a folder. I created a new folder on the server, moved the contents from the old folder to the new, renamed the folders and shared the new folder (with the same name as the old). This did require taking this share offline for a few moments but permanently resolved the issue with no concerns for future 10.4.6 upgraders.

"One possibility for the reason this couldn't be fixed at the workstation is the share being a folder on the server, although I had no means to test this.

"The folder was certainly User Immutable, as shown through the ls -lso command."