We have a 1 TB external HD connected to our Airport Extreme via USB.  We had been accessing this drive from wireless windows computers throughout our home, until recently.  We no longer have such access.  I’m not sure why, or what caused the change.  The only thing that I can think of is that this occurred after a recent software update.  Either way, despite my attempts to correct this situation, it persists…

Our iMac is also wirelessly connected to this same Airport Extreme.  When I view info on this drive, here is what I see for the permissions:

Unknown - read / write

Everyone - no access

I’m assuming that explains our inability to access this external drive now.  I’m unable to change these permissions.  I’m not sure who “unknown”, but I’m envious!

Any ideas?  Thanks much.

Looks like posting just before Thanksgiving wasn’t the best idea (visibility-wise).  If more info is needed, please let me know.  I searched the forum here and web in general, found stuff, tried them, so I think everything is fine, minus of course the aforementioned permissions.  At least that would seem to be problematic…

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have you tried changing the permissions from within the Get Info window? Sometimes that may work.

I have the same problem with Time Capsule. It started just after the last update. Changing permissions has NOT helped. Not certain why (?)

Any help would be appreciated.

Also, can one connect more than one printer along with a hard drive, to Time Capsule using a USB adapter?

Well, in Airport Utility, in the “disks” section of that router, do you have file sharing enabled? Is it set to read/write access?

Also, though I have not tried this myself, it is my understanding that you can connect multiple USB devices to a Time Capsule/Airport Extreme through a USB hub. (Actually, I know that you can connect multiple disks, i’ve just not tried multiple printers.)

Thank you for the input FlipFriddle.  “Get Info” is what I’ve been trying, unfortunately.

I’m at work now, away from my Mac, but from recollection, this is how I access the drive from the Mac, which again is connected wirelessly via the Airport Extreme…

I open Finder.  Under Shared I see what looks like my Airport Extreme.  Clicking on that gets me two folders or drives as I believe I partitioned it (half for Time Machine back-ups and the other half for network access / sharing.  Double clicking on the network folder puts the “drive” on my desktop.  Right clicking on that, Get Info, is where it states read & write is for some unknown user, and everyone else has no access.  Oh, when I first enter the folder / drive, I’m logged-in as a guest.  I do “connect as” (top right) and I need to use some old password to login as myself (Tony).  I seem to also recall something called a “NetAuthAgent”, also requiring an old password.  This is new to me as I had never seen this before (NetAuthAgent).

It’s not highly critical that we have access to this drive, but fairly important though.  We have a newborn, our first, and my wife is taking a ton a photos and video, put them on her laptop, which is now too full.  She had been placing them on this network drive wirelessly.  There are work-arounds I know, but I’d ideally like this to start working again.

I see that I’m not alone.  Maybe it does indeed have something to do with that update a couple weeks back…

As I said above, you set sharing for Airport connected drives in the Airport utility (/Applications/Utilities/Airport Utility.app). I’d start there.

Thanks doogald.  Back home now, and I have indeed been in the Airport Utility…

Under Disks, I have Enable file sharing enabled checked.

Secure Shared Disks With Airport Extreme password.

Remember password in keychain.

Airport Disks Guest Access, Read & Write

At the bottom I see “These settings configure Windows File Sharing.”

This might be the problem, but I have WORKGROUP there.  I had researched what this should be, and I gave that a shot…  Again, this all worked just fine before, so I don’t know what changed exactly.  Thanks much.

When logged-in as a guest, Get Info reads:

Unknown = read & write
Unknown = read & write
everyone = read & write

When logged in as me, a registered user, Get Info displays:

Unknown = read & write
everyone = no access

Same drive with different permissions, depending on who is logged-in?  Calling it a night, again…

Hey there HammockGuy,

Sometimes, Leopard interprets a user or group that does not have a “long name” as Unknown in the Get Info window.  I discovered this when I did an upgrade from Tiger, and found that the old user groups were now reporting themselves as “unknown”.

Have you tried opening Terminal?  If not then open it and issue the following command:

$ls -lase /volumes

(The first and third letters are lower case “L” not uppercase “i”. Don’t type the $).

Post back with the verdict of this listing. (It will include your internal hard drive and any other disks, so feel free to edit it down to the relevant entry only).

The Skeptic - 02 December 2009 04:46 AM

Hey there HammockGuy,

Sometimes, Leopard interprets a user or group that does not have a “long name” as Unknown in the Get Info window.  I discovered this when I did an upgrade from Tiger, and found that the old user groups were now reporting themselves as “unknown”.

Have you tried opening Terminal?  If not then open it and issue the following command:

$ls -lase /volumes

(The first and third letters are lower case “L” not uppercase “i”. Don’t type the $).

Post back with the verdict of this listing. (It will include your internal hard drive and any other disks, so feel free to edit it down to the relevant entry only).

The Skeptic, thank you for making this your first post.  Much appreciated.

Before I forget, while on my wife’s pc laptop, in My Network Places, under Workgroup, it saw the iMac and its hd, pretty much everything was being shared.  I also saw the the name for the ext hd usb connected to the Airport Extreme.  However, expanding that got nowhere (no folders within).  On the iMac itself, I can access the contents.  Just more info that could help…

Ok, that said, I tried what you provided… ls -lase /volumes

I tried it with a space after “ls” and without…

Ok… there is two spaces apparently: ls [space]-lase[space]/volumes

I’m not sure what this just did, but Get Info while logged-in as a registered user is still the same:

unknown = read/write
everyone = no access

On the pc laptop, My Network Places, under Workgroup is now empty.  Something else I need to do?

It sounds as if the Airport Utility settings are ok.

At this point, you may want to try disconnecting the drive from the Time Capsule (I believe that you need to use Airport Utility again to dismount it first, in case other clients are connected), connect the drive directly to your Mac, and do a Get Info. Change the permissions setting to ignore ownership on the drive (I’m not sure that this will do anything, but it’s worth a shot), and do a disk repair from Disk Utility. See if that works when you plug it back in to the Time Capsule.

(By the way, I just connect as a guest to the drive on my Airport Express, and I don’t have trouble from any Mac or Windows clients. I think that you would have to change the setting in the Airport Utility from “use Airport Extreme password” to “with accounts” and then set up the accounts and password there.)

Thanks doogald.  That makes sense, and I’m doing it now….

Actually, I’ve been doing the Disk Repair for last hour.  It’s taking a very long time on the partition I was using for Time Machine back-ups….  The other partition that I was attempting to access on the network went through the repair process in seconds.

I made the permission changes beforehand, as you said, checking the box “Ignore ownership on this volume”.  I really hope this does the trick.

I won’t be able to try until the repair finishes on the Time Machine portion of the drive, and it seems that this will take quite a while.

Now, with the changes I made earlier in Terminal…  Do I need to undue anything there?  I’ll report back soon, I hope with good news.  Thanks!

Well…  progress.  On my wife’s pc laptop, My Network Places, I can see the drive, open it, but nothing inside.  Almost there…  I’ll play around more with it and report back.