Barbie Swanlake - file permission problem

[xuratoth]

Hi,

I recently bought my 4 year old daughter a new game, "Barbie Swanlake". It runs fine under OSX, with one exception:

I installed the game using my account, which is the admin account. However, when we try to run the game from her account, the system crashes with a permissions violation on the file used to store her profile (which I think is under her own Documents folder).

I thought that I could log into my account and change the file permissions via Finder but I find that all user accounts have little red "no-entry" icons next to them.

I tried opening up Terminal and using sudo to switch to a full admin account, but was unclear as to what exactly I needed to type).

So, two questions:
1. I take it that depsite me being an admin, when I log in I am not a real admin, just a superuser of some kind?

2. How do I change the file permissions on her Barbie profile file so that she can access it using her own account?

Many thanks.

PS - Sorry about the lack of error message details, I am not at home at the moment.
PPS - yes, the game *is* sickenly over-syrupy!

 

[Damrod]

1. I take it that depsite me being an admin, when I log in I am not a real admin, just a superuser of some kind?

Yes, kinda. As a standard you are not automatically logged in as 'root', as it is a very powerfull account. It is easy to destroy something critical when you're not familiar with what you're doing. So as a saftey for not so expirienced users, the admin account can not do everything the normal root can.

EDIT: That could be misunderstood. For admin actions under the terminal, you have to either use sudo or su and the administrator-password (usually your account password). Somewhat similar actions in the Finder ask for your password as well

2. How do I change the file permissions on her Barbie profile file so that she can access it using her own account?

I think the cheapest and easiest solution would be to uninstall the game, and re-install it under your daughters account. It should work, even if it asks for your admin password it should install all files with the right permissions so that your daughter can play it under her account.

 

[brianleahy]

My sister ran into problems with a Barbie game as well, when installing it for her daughter. I think some of those are rather slapdash OS X ports, and may have to be run in an administrator account.

 

[xuratoth]

Well, another case of me being dumber than a very dumb thing at a dumb convention!

The file in question was actually under the user folder of the Application's install folder. So I could change the owner to be my daughter, and it now works fine.

However, thanks for the replies. In particular, I was getting worried that I had been surfing whilst logged in as root. Good to know that I wasn't!

 

[Natobasso]

I agree about reinstalling, but install it directly on your daughter's sign in. You can temporarily grant her admin permissions from your admin account (in users) then log into her account and install the software.