Different users, how?

frugle · February 3, 2005 7:26PM

Okay, I know OSX has an aweesome user switching system.

but it sure is one pain in the butt.

I'd like to have my own user, so I can have my e-mail, desktop etc. but I want to still have all the music in iTunes and photos in iPhoto.

is this possible? I can read the other users folders after I setup permissions, but whenever I try to add picture music etc, it duplicates them. so now I have 2 of the exact same songs in 2 differnt folders.

is it possible for itunes or iphoto to look at the other users folder for music and pictures?

frugle · February 3, 2005 7:53PM

also, is there a way to save my AIM buddy list and transfer it to my .mac buddy list?

ipodandimac · February 3, 2005 11:33PM

i dunno about the ichat address book (i have the same question), but with your account thing: make a new user for yourself and everything, then turn on sharing for itunes and iphoto. as long as you leave them open and use fast user switching so you can stay logged into the account the pics and tunes are on, you can access them via sharing wit the other account. you can also set up a password through each respective app so only you can access them.

costique · February 4, 2005 2:04AM

Well, there is a way, but it involves using CLI. I'm sorry I don't have enough time to give all the steps in detail, but I'll outline them in short.

1. In one account make sure the Music and Pictures folders are writable for all users.

2. Delete these folders from the other account and replace them with hard links to those folders in the first account. I mean hard links made with ln command, not aliases.

3. You may have to make sure that all the users have full access to special files like ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml.

It should work.

ebby · February 4, 2005 3:00AM

Am I missing something totally obvious here? Wouldn't it be simple just to save the iTunes music and iPhoto photos to, say, the first level of the drive and point the applications to it? (Or in the shared folder but not in any specific user folder) That way all the users will have access to the media.

Or is that too simple a solution to work?

\

frugle · February 4, 2005 6:57AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ebby

Am I missing something totally obvious here? Wouldn't it be simple just to save the iTunes music and iPhoto photos to, say, the first level of the drive and point the applications to it? (Or in the shared folder but not in any specific user folder) That way all the users will have access to the media.

Or is that too simple a solution to work? \

that was my initial thinking, but I can't find a way to point it. In windows, you can change the target folder,

everything I click it imports them (coping all songs and photos making duplicates)

the only way I can see to get around this is to click each individual song, and open it in itunes, but even then when I buy a new song, it won't be present on the other account.

why can't I just run the program the exact same on both accounts? so that both users have the exact same itunes, exact same playlists, exact same everything?

ipodandimac · February 4, 2005 10:11AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Frugle

that was my initial thinking, but I can't find a way to point it. In windows, you can change the target folder,

everything I click it imports them (coping all songs and photos making duplicates)

in itunes under prefs>advanced, you can specify the itunes music location, or tell itunes NOT to copy songs into the itunes folder.

frugle · February 4, 2005 11:43AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ipodandimac

in itunes under prefs>advanced, you can specify the itunes music location, or tell itunes NOT to copy songs into the itunes folder.

mkay, that worked, thanks!

but there is no way to make it to where when I buy a song, it shows up in other acounts and visa versa?

the general · February 4, 2005 11:49AM

you could also use the shared folder in the users folder, thats what i do, then set the itunes music folder as your music folder that you put in shared. (it wont autoupdate however, but if you turn off copying files to your local library when you add new songs, it will still point to the shared folder)

rrabu · February 5, 2005 12:34AM

iTunes:

1. Move ~/Music/iTunes folder to /Users/Shared/iTunes

2. Enter terminal and set the group to staff:

chgrp -r staff /Users/Shared/iTunes

3. In terminal, make sure the group has write access:

chmod -r g+w /Users/Shared/iTunes

4. In iTunes, in preferences, under the "Advanced" tab, change the location to /Users/Shared/iTunes

iPhoto

1. Move "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library" to "/Users/Shared/iPhoto Library"

2. Enter terminal and set the group and permissions:

chgrp -r staff /Users/Shared/iPhoto\\ Library

chmod -r g+w /Users/Shared/iPhoto\\ Library

3. Hold down "option" while starting iPhoto (this works in iLife '05 and I think '04. I don't know about earlier version). iPhoto will then let you choose which iPhoto library to use. You can navigate to it in /Users/Shared and all is good.

Not that the last step for each application needs to be done on each user using the shared library. I also am not sure if I had to change the group and permissions when I did this. I don't think I had to change the group as all my users are "Admin" users so the default group of "wheel" was alright. However, if you want non-admin users to be able to edit the libraries, you need to change the group to "staff". If you need more control, you can create a new group and grant it to each user that you want to have read/write permissions. In the terminal, type "group" to see what groups a user is a member of.

I haven't played with GarageBand or any other iLife applications so haven't attempted to share data across different users in any of them.

costique · February 7, 2005 4:00AM

What rrabu said should work OK. If you need an illustrated tutorial, here are they for iTunes and iPhoto.

Different users, how?

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