Can't view contents of Documents or subfolders/file with CLI only

Question

I do a moderate amount with the command line but have inadvertently done something that confuses me.

I needed to download the contents of a webpage with wget so I did this:

wget -P -r ~/Documents/sites/ds_site https://www.examplewebsite.org/

That apparently has changed my permissions for the folder. Or so it would seem. When I cd to the site, once I get past Documents, autocompletion stops. I can finish the folder path (ds_site in this case). But when I try to check the file contents, I get the following message:

ls: .: Operation not permitted

However, there are no issues with seeing, opening, creating or removing a file or subfolder while using Finder. Just cli and only for under the Documents folder.

What I've done. Checked for permissions both with Finder

enter image description here

and with the command line. The file shown is just to illustrate the problem is also for files, not just subfolders. Again, this is fine in Finder.

Any ideas of how I can fix this?

Add Terminal.app or iTerm2.app to the Full Disk Access permission panel. — Joy Jin, Nov 22 '21 at 03:10
That did it but I'd like to know why. LIke, why that was the fix and what caused the break. That, and have it as an answer so I could accept and upvote it. — hrokr, Nov 22 '21 at 03:19
It's because of the personal information protection layer ("Transparency, Consent, and Control" or TCC) in recent versions of macOS. See 'Why do I get "ls: Desktop: Operation not permitted" when I own Desktop?' and "What and how does macOS Mojave implement to restrict applications access to personal data?" — Gordon Davisson, Nov 22 '21 at 04:19
You can try reset permission on your User with this terminal command : diskutil resetuserpermissions / $(id -u) — , Nov 22 '21 at 05:54

Can't view contents of Documents or subfolders/file with CLI only

0 Answers0