Implications of ignoring permissions on external drive

[camner]

My Mac Pro is in the shop and I'm working off my laptop. I have a SD! copy of my Mac Pro boot disk on an external drive connected to the laptop.

The UID of my Mac Pro user is different than the UID on the laptop, so the ~/User/Documents (and anything else in the ~/User tree) on the external drive is not accessible from the laptop user.

I know if I check "ignore ownership" on the external drive I'll be able to access everything.

Once I get the Mac Pro back I'm going to want to clone the external drive back to the Mac Pro internal. What's going to happen with permissions? If I understand correctly, the ownership of files/folders that were created BEFORE I check "ignore permissions" will be fine, because once I uncheck the box, the permissions will go back to as before.

But, if "ignore permissions" is checked and I create files/folders on the external drive and then clone back to my Mac Pro, who is going to own (and have access) to these files/folders created via the laptop user with "ignore permissions" on the external drive?

If ignoring permissions in this scenario is ill advised, is there a way I can access my files on the external drive without hopelessly messing things up later?

[dnanian]

The files will likely end up being owned by a "floating", mysterious user which - when ownership is on - will look owned by anyone trying to access the file until re-written.

[camner]

Thanks for the quick reply, which somehow I missed.

So, the conclusion for next time I need to do this is "Go ahead, click 'ignore ownership' and don't worry about what the system does...when you unclick 'ignore ownership' later, everything will automagically work the way you want it to."

Do I have this essentially correct?

[dnanian]

Well, ownership will go back on, yes. Ignore will let you get access to stuff.

[camner]

(Didn't miss the reply this time..but for some reason I don't get the email notification, even though I have "instant notification" on...doesn't show up in the Gmail spam folder, either...perhaps the forum notification doesn't work any more?)

Thanks again for the quick reply.

[dnanian]

It should work...I'm getting notifications. Weird.