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`xattr` bummer for non-root user trying to clear quarantine/"app damaged" problem #292

Open boccio-john opened 3 months ago

boccio-john commented 3 months ago

Description I would never have guessed this problem

A friend of mine was installing Octave for the first time on an M1 MacBook Air and the "xattr" was not working. After a while I thought to ask whether he had ever been superuser on that computer - he had not! After I got over my surprise, I realized he simply did not have access to modify the ,dmg file. Once access was granted, all worked fine.

I don't know how you can warn the few new users of this problem.

References

apjanke commented 3 months ago

Interesting. I haven't run in to this one before. But I'm pretty much always running as a user who has Administrator rights on the computer.

I'll try to set up a repro case where I try doing an Octave.app installation as a non-admin user or the like.

I dunno if an Octave.app installation is going to work at all for non-Administrator users? You might need Administrator rights to put stuff in the main /Applications folder, and the main /Applications folder is the only place that Octave.app can run correctly from.

boccio-john commented 3 months ago

Here is a direct quote from the user (I just got it) - I seem to have misunderstood the reason, but I still do not understand why this happened. Thanks for you consideration. I am just trying to be useful to others.

On Jul 28, 2024, at 10:17 PM, Andrew Janke @.***> wrote:

Interesting. I haven't run in to this one before. But I'm pretty much always running as a user who has Administrator rights on the computer.

I'll try to set up a repro case where I try doing an Octave.app installation as a non-admin user or the like.

I dunno if an Octave.app installation is going to work at all for non-Administrator users? You might need Administrator rights to put stuff in the main /Applications folder, and the main /Applications folder is the only place that Octave.app can run correctly from.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/octave-app/octave-app/issues/292#issuecomment-2254812765, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AR7HCHSOHPLEJQ2K6XTOS6LZOWQ4NAVCNFSM6AAAAABLTIN342VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDENJUHAYTENZWGU. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

boccio-john commented 3 months ago

Sorry I forgot to include the quote:

Well, it was because in one menu the Terminal did not have permission to access the Download and other directories. Not that I didn’t have access. My access was set to Read and Write anything, just not through the Terminal.

On Jul 28, 2024, at 10:17 PM, Andrew Janke @.***> wrote:

Interesting. I haven't run in to this one before. But I'm pretty much always running as a user who has Administrator rights on the computer.

I'll try to set up a repro case where I try doing an Octave.app installation as a non-admin user or the like.

I dunno if an Octave.app installation is going to work at all for non-Administrator users? You might need Administrator rights to put stuff in the main /Applications folder, and the main /Applications folder is the only place that Octave.app can run correctly from.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/octave-app/octave-app/issues/292#issuecomment-2254812765, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AR7HCHSOHPLEJQ2K6XTOS6LZOWQ4NAVCNFSM6AAAAABLTIN342VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDENJUHAYTENZWGU. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

apjanke commented 3 months ago

Well, it was because in one menu the Terminal did not have permission to access the Download and other directories. Not that I didn’t have access. My access was set to Read and Write anything, just not through the Terminal.

Ohhh. Yeah. Like, it was the Terminal app which hadn't yet been granted macOS "Gatekeeper" permissions to get filesystem access to ~/Downloads (one of the distinct Gatekeeper-protected folders) within your user account, so that xattr run from it could have effect. I think.

Jeez, I don't even know how I'd describe that to a beginner user.

I guess I'll try to reproduce that, using a fresh user account on one of my test VMs, grab some screenshots, and put those into a subsection of the instructions on how to do the xattr trick? And that probably means that it's time for the xattr trick to get its whole dedicated page on the https://octave-app.org website.

apjanke commented 3 months ago

Thanks for you consideration. I am just trying to be useful to others.

And you are! I hadn't even thought of this particular failure scenario. Thanks for posting the report.