You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Dropbox files no longer inherit folder permissions
Within my Dropbox folder, I have sub-folders with different Windows ACL permissions. Up until recently, whenever Dropbox synced a file it inherited its folder permissions perfectly.
Now it no longe...
I have a dropbox subfolder that is set up for sharing over a local Windows network. The folder and its parents are all set for sharing with a default of Full Access for "Everyone" on the network. If I create a file in this folder using Windows, the file will have proper NTFS permissions, both local and Network Share.
Any files imported into the folder through Dropbox, however, from, say, an Android device or a Linux machine, only inherit local NTFS permissions. The permissions for "Everyone" are missing. I have to open each file's permissions box and add "Everyone" to it for any other machines on the Windows net to see the file.
I've had this arragement for quite some time, and it seems like the permissions worked fine up until a few months ago after an app update. I've been pulling my hair out looking for solutions, but I am at my wit's end.
What is Dropbox doing differently when creating these files from all other Windows apps?
i'm running into this same issue with our server setup. never had a problem until recently and frankly it was a bear to debug and finally figure out what was happening.
glad to find others with the same issue.
i'm not sure what the solution is here. if we put the client on every computer in the office, it becomes a CPU/memory hog and total PITA to maintain.
the server-based syncing combined with NTFS permissions was a perfect solution.
i know there are NAS devices that sync with dropbox, how does this update affect them? i think they tend to use the API so not sure if they would have the same problem or not.
Walter wrote:Hi SLWelsh - welcome to the Dropbox Community!
Please elaborate:
1) As of what specific version was this change made, and why wasn't it highlighted in the release notes?
2) What else do you consider a "custom" permission? You mentioned two things, both outside of the Windows realm, POSIX and BSD, that wouldn't be in play for us, so I'd like to know all the possible scenarious you mean.
3) "May" be removed? Explain further.
What we've been seeing lately in isolated cases, definitely with files that have synced recently from one site to another, is users (in the Security permissions list of a given file in Properties) being removed and the list merely being left with SYSTEM and Administrators, or similar. We then need to fix this manually and hope it doesn't happen again.
I don't want to open a case. I just want to see this fully documented.
Walter, dealing with this isn't fun. We need some answers. Do you have them?
Update: I found the master thread for this stupid issue, so I'll be continuing there:
So what's the fix or workaround? Or do I need to just move to a different file-sharing service?
Those computers do not have Internet access. This is not a solution whatsoever.
Please explain to me why Dropbox is overriding the default permissions for the folder? This should have no bearing on sync of files to other platforms.
Same Issue! Thanks for posting, I have been pulling my hair out as well trying to figure this out. BAD MOVE DROPBOX! WHY WHY WHY! We have a lot of $$$ invested into our DB tools and the way we use them. THIS IS FRUSTRATING!
