How do I chmod ACLs to groups with spaces in the name on Mac OS X?

Question

I'm trying to add an ACL for the group "Domain Users", but since it has spaces in the group name it isn't parsed correctly by chmod:

$ chmod -R +a 'DOMAIN\Domain Users allow list,search,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit' shared
Unable to translate 'DOMAIN\Domain' to a UID/GID

How do I escape the space? I've tried all the obvious approaches with single quotes, double quotes, and backslash.

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 21 '14 at 08:47

Since Apple's source for chmod is available, there's a hint in the parser:

if (strchr(pebuf, ':')) /* User/Group names can have spaces */

And indeed, if you read the man page it says:

If the user or group name contains spaces you can use ':' as the delimiter between name and permission.

Thus the solution is:

$ chmod +a 'DOMAIN\Domain Users:allow list,search,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit' shared

How do I chmod ACLs to groups with spaces in the name on Mac OS X?

1 Answers1