Are ACLs flawed?

Hi All,

I'm trying to make a dynamic folder hierarchy to share via WebDAV.  I believe directories and files must be readable/writeable by _www to be accessible by WebDAV.

I was hoping if I set the ACL for the root folder with directory and file inherit everything would be ok but it seems not.  ACLs seem to be problematic because:

1. inheritance does not apply to files and directories that already exist in the hierarchy 

I guess I could apply the acl recursively to all files and folders currently in the hierarchy, but that wouldn't get around the problem that,

2. folders and files *moved* into the hierarchy do not inherit the ACLs

Are ACLs flawed or I am missing something?  I guess its perhaps a security consideration - just by moving a file into a folder with inherit permissions it shouldn't inherit those, but that's what I want.

The syntax for ACLs on the command line also seems very verbose - does one really have to type (or copy) all those attributes, there is no "all" for ACLs?

I only found the Sandbox GUI app for Mac ACLs after I had spent a good deal of time typing the ACLs and correcting my typos, mistakes, ...

Cheers,
Ashley.


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Ashley Aitken
Perth, Western Australia
mrhatken at mac dot com
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