Help Newbie

[mbanje]

Hi all

locked some folders on an external hard drive and Espionage worked a treat.

Bought a new iMac, install Espionage, plugged in external hard drive and could not access files.

Plugged external hard drive into old iMac, unlocked all folders and uninstalled Espionage. Received a confirmation message that the selected folders would not be protected by espionage any longer, confirmed uninstall. All folders unlocked on old iMac, plugged External harddrive into new iMAC and when accessing some of the folders I received the three default folders:

>>This folder contains encrypted data
>> It is controlled by Espionage
>> Do Not modify it in this state

i am now unable to access the folders on old or new iMAC and I am struggling to search for solutions - can anyone please advise.

Thanks in advance.

I am iMac ignorant so if asking me for info please can you specify in layman terms.

just to add when I try to relock it on the new iMac i get an error:

Bad owner
This folder must be owned by Mac. It is owned by home.

[zsolt]

Hello, pls try the following:

on the new Mac, open espionage and drag the previously protected folders (the one which contains the 3 folders named, this folder contains protected....) onto espionage window. It should detect that the folders were previously protected and simply ask for the folder password, once you enter it, the folder should land in your espionage window. Repeat for all perviously protected folders.
Now continue to use Espionage as before.

let me know if this worked.

Rgds
Zsolt

[mbanje]

Hi Zsolt

No Joy, just receive the following error message when I tried your suggestion.

Thank you.

[zsolt]

OK, then it might be a permission or owner issue, this is a bit hard to explain if you are new to computers, but we go step by step and it should work.
Select in the Finder the folder you want to add to Espionage, right click on it (or hold the control key and then click on it) and select "get info" from the popup menu. An new window will appear, scroll down to the bottom and read the owner part, it will look like the attached picture

Screen Shot 2012-09-10 at 21.42.34.png (21.66 KiB) Viewed 21765 times

we are interested in the first line, what does it say home or Mac?

Next launch terminal
write
cd "
this was cd, space and double quote, then drag the protected folder over the terminal, this will fill in the path for you, add one doublequote at the end of the line, and then hit enter.
then write
cd ..
this is cd, space and two dots
hit enter, then write
ls -l
and send me the output of the ls command.
Sorry for all the trouble. If you prefer we can do a remote session and I can do this for you.
rgds
Zsolt

[mbanje]

Hi Zsolt

The top line says home.

I followed your instructions and hope I have captured what you requested - when i try it on the one locked folder called old I get the following:.

mcdaddys-imac:~ Mac$ cd "/Volumes/FW/old"
mcdaddys-imac:old Mac$ cd ..
mcdaddys-imac:FW Mac$ ls -l
total 2208
-rw-r--r--@ 1 home staff 54027 19 Oct 2011 ATTYInvite091.pdf
-rw-r--r--@ 1 home staff 55744 19 Oct 2011 ATTYInvite092.pdf
drwxr-xr-x@ 22 home staff 748 1 Sep 18:30 AuntyAnnePics
drwxr-xr-x+ 4 root staff 136 27 Aug 09:19 Backups.backupdb
drwxr-xr-x@ 35 home staff 1190 1 Sep 20:21 Buffalo Back Up
-rw-r--r--@ 1 home staff 1013896 15 May 18:36 Canonscan.pdf
drwxr-xr-x@ 20726 home staff 704684 15 Aug 10:35 Photos
drwxr-xr-x@ 31 home staff 1054 18 Sep 2011 Upload
drwxr-xr-x@ 9 home staff 306 1 Sep 18:46 jan docs
drwxr-xr-x@ 9 home staff 306 1 Sep 18:47 old
drwxr-xr-x@ 65 home staff 2210 17 Aug 21:00 scan
mcdaddys-imac:FW Mac$

When I try it on another locker folder on the same drive I get the following.

daddys-imac:~ Mac$ cd "/Volumes/FW/jan\ docs"
-bash: cd: /Volumes/FW/jan\ docs: No such file or directory
mcdaddys-imac:~ Mac$ cd ..
mcdaddys-imac:Users Mac$ ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 30 Mac staff 1020 9 Sep 14:09 Mac
drwxrwxrwt 11 root wheel 374 17 Aug 20:21 Shared
drwxr-xr-x+ 13 home staff 442 17 Aug 12:07 home
mcdaddys-imac:Users Mac$


All the other folders are accessible

[zsolt]

You are doing quite well for a newbie

OK, so as you can see in the output of the ls command some folders are owned by home and some by Mac.
This is very probably because on the old mac your username was home and on a new one it is Mac.
Espionage insists that the folder you want to import belongs to the active user.

I forgot to ask you for the folder name, but it is OK.
To change the owner of the folder, start again the terminal, repeat what you did yesterday until the ls -l shows in the listing the folder name you need to change owner from.

then run this command

sudo chown -R Mac foldername

hit enter, it will ask you for your account password, enter it (it will show no characters), and hit enter.
you can verify the owner with another ls -l command.

If it changed to Mac, then try to add the folder to Espionage again.

Let me know if it worked.

Rgds
Zsolt

[mbanje]

Zsolt

Thank you worked a treat managed to recover data - your instructions were perfect.

I am upgrading - thank you. Excellent service.

[zsolt]

I'm glad I managed to help. I hope you learned something too in the process
If anything else is unclear or you are just curious, let me know.

Enjoy using Espionage,
zsolt