Noobie question: 10.6.8, terminal, permissions.

[Torvon]

Hey there.

(1) Work laptops, I am on 6 months stay abroad. My user account has no permissions whatsoever when it comes to installing programs etc.

(2) However there is an admin account I can access, so when it prompts "please enter username/PW" I enter admin details and I can install programs. That's the way the IT set it up for me for the my stay abroad. I don't work on admin account, just use it now and then.

(3) Problem: sometimes there is no prompt asking, it just doesn't work. In that case I have to log out, log in again as admin, install. And in that case, very often with my user account I cannot write in the created directories. That sucks, how can I avoid that?

(4) Biggest problem: learning Python at the moment. Terminal: "python install setup.py" doesn't work for any modules because I cannot write as user into this folder. When I log in as admin and do it, it doesn't work as user.

Can you help me out here?


Thanks
E.

 

[maflynn]

(3) Problem: sometimes there is no prompt asking, it just doesn't work. In that case I have to log out, log in again as admin, install. And in that case, very often with my user account I cannot write in the created directories. That sucks, how can I avoid that?

No, there's no way around this as its at the basis of OSX's security. If your account doesn't have privileges and you don't want to log out and back in as the administrator, you can't get around the security. In fact that would make OSX extremely vulnerable. Why not leverage Fast user switching in OSX so you don't have to log out of your session, but just log into the admin account

(4) Biggest problem: learning Python at the moment. Terminal: "python install setup.py" doesn't work for any modules because I cannot write as user into this folder. When I log in as admin and do it, it doesn't work as user.

Sounds like you may need root access to install some of the python components. You can try using the sudo command to give you temporary root access but your IT department may already have that locked down. You can also try using mamp which provides a stand alone environment for such things to learn. Take a look at Mamp's site to see if thats a fit for you. It installs apache, mysql and php in a server environment for development purposes.

 

[Torvon]

1) Fast user switching: great, I don't find it in the options. Is that a normal feature everybody can switch on? (first mac, sorry, really got no clue)

2) Mamp looks good, thanks!

E.