Directory with correct permissions is not writable I installed high sierra on a new machine and then copied over some  directories inside my home from my time machine external disk.

The backup was created with another machine and os version from a user having the same name of the one recently created on the new installation.

90% of the things went ok.

For unknown reasons some subdirectories of my home (copied from the backup) are not writable.

I have tried every possible combination of chmod commands, and in theory everything should work correctly: 


cmd+i, general: 


item not locked
item not shared

cmd+i, sharing and permission: 


myuser: Read and Write
staff: Read Only
everyone: Read Only 

stat shows:


Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (  501/     myuser)   Gid: (   20/   staff)
501 is the correct id my current user



I think it's not a unix permission problem as the permissions should work as is.

I've also tried chflags nouchg my_folder with no luck.

Not sure what could cause this.
Write permission could be blocked by file/folder modes, user flags, non-ownership, Access Control Lists (ACLs) and/or extended attributes.  Below are some commands which can fix these types of errors.


  Note: I assume my_folder does not contain any symbolic links. If there are symbolic links, then these commands may need to be modified.


You can recursively change the folders mode to 755 (drwxr-xr-x) by using the command given below.

find my_folder -type d -execdir chmod 755 {} \;


You can recursively change the regular files mode to 644 (-rw-r--r--) by using the command given below.

find my_folder -type f -execdir chmod 644 {} \;


You can recursively remove user flags by using the command given below.

sudo chflags -R nouchg,nohidden,noopaque,dump,nouappnd my_folder


You can recursively change user ownership of the files and folders by using the command given below.

sudo chown -R $USER my_folder


You can recursively change the group of the files and folders to staff by using the command given below. 

sudo chgrp -R staff my_folder


You can recursively remove any Access Control Lists (ACLs) by using the command given below.

chmod -RN my_folder


You can recursively remove any extended attributes by using the command given below.

xattr -rc my_folder


Often searching for locked files and/or folders can be useful. Below is a command for this.

find my_folder -flags +uchg -exec ls -dF {} \;