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New to OS X...need help managing user accounts.

G

gaelan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 11, 2005
188
0
What is the best way to share photo, music and documents between multiple user accounts on the same mac? Right now, my account is admin and the wife is a “managed user”. Do I need to set up a third user account for myself for everyday use.

I’ve messed around with the shared folders and public folders with no success. Moving the files to Shared Folder allows the other user to view using iPhoto, but it affects my account when I open iPhoto. It prompts me to find the iPhoto library, but when I navigate to the Shared Folder it is just an endless path of folders with the only option to “open”.

Ideally, I want all user accounts to be able to share certain files that are saved to a central location. I am about 5 days new to OS X, and this one is stumping me.
 
gaelan said:
they both have to be admin accounts? originally the files were transferred from my pc using the admin account, now i want to share those files with other user accounts.
Click to expand...

No, sorry I misswrote. You should be able to dump something in the Shared folder, and have ALL users access them. The problem is that the other users will not have write privilidges to those files. One thing you can do is select the files you want to share (and allow others to edit), and change the ownership (select file, right click, "get info"). At the bottom of the Get info window there is an ownership drop down menu that will allow you to change the read/write options on that file. It also works for entire folders.
 
Lovesong said:
One thing you can do is select the files you want to share (and allow others to edit), and change the ownership (select file, right click, "get info"). At the bottom of the Get info window there is an ownership drop down menu that will allow you to change the read/write options on that file. It also works for entire folders.
Click to expand...

Can you do that without moving it to the shared folder, or do you move it to shared AND set the permissions via right click?
 
gaelan said:
Can you do that without moving it to the shared folder, or do you move it to shared AND set the permissions via right click?
Click to expand...

The problem is that other users can't access your "personal" folders on your account ("documents", "music", "pictures", etc.). What you can do, is you can change the permissions on those folders themselves. That kinda opens up your files to everyone else that might be using your computer, but if that's what you want, you can do it.
 
Lovesong said:
That kinda opens up your files to everyone else that might be using your computer, but if that's what you want, you can do it.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the help. I'll try it when I get home. I want my wife and I to be able to dump photos from our separate accounts and view the same library of pics when in iPhoto. Same with our mp3s and certain docs.
 
gaelan said:
Thanks for the help. I'll try it when I get home. I want my wife and I to be able to dump photos from our separate accounts and view the same library of pics when in iPhoto. Same with our mp3s and certain docs.
Click to expand...


At lunch i went home and tried it out. from my account (admin), I found the iphoto library>get info and set permissions to share with the wife's account.

Fast switched to her account and all was good with the sharing. Went back to my account and closed iphoto. It seems i must be logged in WITH iphoto open to share the files.

There has got to be a better way without getting deep into the terminal as mentioned before. Why can't I just put the files in the shared folder and give all users access at any time regardless of whether admin is logged on with iphoto open? Like I said it won't let me redirect the library to the shared folder. Is my only option to make dupe copies of the files and manually update separate folders?
 
The way I got this to work a while back was I basically moved my pictures to the shared folder. I then made aliases of that folder and moved them to the pictures folders of each user. I renamed them to what they were originally and rebuilt my library.

Essentially what you're doing that way is you're creating a pointer (kinda like a shortcut to a folder), and you're tricking iPhoto to think that it's a real folder. All your pictures are shared so that way there is no permissions issues. Try that and see if it works.
 
Lovesong said:
The way I got this to work a while back was I basically moved my pictures to the shared folder. I then made aliases of that folder and moved them to the pictures folders of each user. I renamed them to what they were originally and rebuilt my library.

Essentially what you're doing that way is you're creating a pointer (kinda like a shortcut to a folder), and you're tricking iPhoto to think that it's a real folder. All your pictures are shared so that way there is no permissions issues. Try that and see if it works.
Click to expand...

so do you have to do the same thing each time you dump photos into the shared folder?
 
No, you don't -- the pointer refers to the beginning of the iPhoto library. From there, the entire folder structure is intact in the shared folder. Does that make sense? You just need one alias / pointer to the top level iPhoto Library folder, or better yet, the Pictures folder.

And you don't have to do anything special for any user of any level to access the folder inside the shared folder *EXCEPT* add them to the access control list with recursion for subfolders, as in the hint from macosxhints posted in that first reply.
 
mkrishnan said:
No, you don't -- the pointer refers to the beginning of the iPhoto library. From there, the entire folder structure is intact in the shared folder. Does that make sense? You just need one alias / pointer to the top level iPhoto Library folder, or better yet, the Pictures folder.

And you don't have to do anything special for any user of any level to access the folder inside the shared folder *EXCEPT* add them to the access control list with recursion for subfolders, as in the hint from macosxhints posted in that first reply.
Click to expand...

thanks for all the help. i think the problem was in teh ownership and permissions. i had her account as managed with restrictions on system and finder within the parental controls. i changed the details of the pic folder to group:everyone. i still own it, but granted read write access to everyone.

i also did what was suggested above. put pictures folder in shared and dropped the alias into each user account and renamed it. I did have to rename the original Pictures folder Pictures2. WIll that be an issue later?

Will I have to do that for our mp3 files as well?
 
gaelan said:
Will I have to do that for our mp3 files as well?
Click to expand...

If you're allowing the folder to be loaded up in iPhoto, I think you have to give more than read privileges -- I think iPhoto may behave unpredictably if it's not allowed to write to the iPhoto library.

If you want to keep a separate Pictures or Music folder in the separate user accounts, you can do one of two or so things:

- You can make the alias at the iPhoto Library / iTunes Library / etc instead of at the Pictures and Music folders levels. Then you leave the Pictures and Music folders as real folders in the user accounts and you make aliases for the library folders inside them.

- You can certainly create a second folder for user specific pictures that can be named anything you like (aside from Pictures)

- If you don't need to have an individual user's pictures folder, you can just delete the extra folder.

You can do the exact same thing for the Music folder or with the iTunes folder inside it.
 
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