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rjwb's avatar
rjwb
Helpful | Level 7
5 years ago

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...
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Walter's avatar
Walter
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

Hi SLWelsh - welcome to the Dropbox Community!

What you notice is now expected as we implemented a fix in a new version of the Dropbox desktop application that ensures both consistent folder icons and file/folder permissions for items residing within the Dropbox folder.
 
If you have files or folders in the Dropbox folder with custom permissions (such as custom POSIX permissions or BSD flags), these may be removed to ensure the file syncs to other devices without any issues.  
 
I hope this clears things up and we're always a post away if you have any additional questions. 
Brian1's avatar
Brian1
Collaborator | Level 10
5 years ago
Walter wrote:

Hi SLWelsh - welcome to the Dropbox Community!

What you notice is now expected as we implemented a fix in a new version of the Dropbox desktop application that ensures both consistent folder icons and file/folder permissions for items residing within the Dropbox folder.
 
If you have files or folders in the Dropbox folder with custom permissions (such as custom POSIX permissions or BSD flags), these may be removed to ensure the file syncs to other devices without any issues.  
 
I hope this clears things up and we're always a post away if you have any additional questions. 

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.

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