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beaster

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 19, 2005
96
0
Recently picked up a Rev.D 12" PB and love it. So much so that I just convinced my dad to get a Mac Mini - it's on order. I have 2 questions re: little annoyances that I hope someone can help with:

First, is there a way to control the timestamp that Safari applies to a downloaded file? From what I can tell, Safari preserves the timestamp of the file that is assigned to the file on whatever server you pulled it off of. So, if I download a file with Safari at 15:00 on 3/31, the timestamp shown in Finder is often not 15:00 on 3/31, but instead some earlier timestamp (presumably the last modified time on the server). In Firefox on my Windows box and my Linux box, the timestamp shows when the file arrived on the local box - 15:00 on 3/31. This is annoying since I often pull down various little programs during a surfing session to a common "downloads" file, and go back to that folder and sort by date to see what goodies await me. But with Safari, a file I just downloaded might show up as being 3 months old and sort to the bottom of the list where I don't see it.

OK, 2nd question: is there a straighforward way for an admin user to temporarily authenticate as root in the Finder? Kind of a GUI equivalent of sudo? From time to time I want to copy/move some files from another user account on my PB to my homedir. I can do this on the command line with sudo, but it'd be nice to be able to do it in Finder. I know I can chown the files/folders temporarily and then chown them back when I'm done (either on the command line or via the Finder), but that's messy. I was looking for a way in Finder to say "I'm an admin, let me get to someone else files for a bit and then go back to being me".

OK, like I said, minor annoyances. But I have to complain about something!

Thanks,
Sean
 
beaster said:
OK, 2nd question: is there a straighforward way for an admin user to temporarily authenticate as root in the Finder?

One option is to go to Accounts in Prefs, choose Login Options, and enable Fast User Switching, with the "user name and passwords" option set (not list of names). Then, you can click on the user name in the menu bar, go to the login window, and login as root. You will remain logged in as your normal admin account in the background.

All the caveats regarding the dangers of being logged in as root apply, natch, but you sound like an advanced user, so you should be able to take care of yourself. ;)
 
mkrishnan said:
One option is to go to Accounts in Prefs, choose Login Options, and enable Fast User Switching, with the "user name and passwords" option set (not list of names). Then, you can click on the user name in the menu bar, go to the login window, and login as root. You will remain logged in as your normal admin account in the background.

All the caveats regarding the dangers of being logged in as root apply, natch, but you sound like an advanced user, so you should be able to take care of yourself. ;)

Thanks Mohan. Agreed, that'd work, but I'd rather not enable the root acct. Just paranoid I guess. Also, even if I copied/moved the files as root, i'd still have to chown them when I was done. I guess there's no getting around that. It is UNIX after all. ;) Although - that gives me an idea - I guess I could just use FUS to go in as the other user and dump the files I want into my ~/Public/Drop Box.

-Sean
 
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