video editors need advice

M

mark cookman

Registered
We have been trying to switch our first machine from 9 to os x .
The mac is set up with multiple users but when we save a project file into the users/shared folder the next user to log in cannot modify/overwrite it , he has to "save as" and on a big job with much colaborative work this is not on.

Same when we start saving files to the server, they too have this "overwrite by owner only" permission setup .

How can I get OSX to default into saving a read write execute (os9 style) file?

BTW . I have read info here that chmod 777 will do the trick and give us the os9 style of shared files but our guys dont want to be diddling about with get info , master passwords or the terminal , they have work to do!
 
I've got two suggestions for you:

1) Set up a cron job to chmod /Users/Shared every minute.

2) Change all your users to have the same UID.

Neither one is perfect. The cron job will have a delay (of up to one minute) before the file is editable. The UID trick means that everyone will be able to read/write everyone else's files.

On another note, for UNIX shells, umask would do the trick, but I'm not sure how to set the umask for the finder. Anyone else know how to do that?

Hope this helps...

-alex.
 
You could also probably write an applescript droplet to do it. It wouldn't be automatic, but it would be very quick & simple - park the droplet in your dock and just drag/drop each new project folder onto it.

If you want, I'll see if I can slap one together next time I'm near my Mac.
 
The MacOSX permissions systems to the rescue.

Any given particular file or directory in the filesystem has three settable access 'flags'. Any of them can be modified and set independly.
They are:

- 'owner': the creator of the file, associated to your username, so you can set the file to be read-only for yourself (so you don't accidentally delete it for example).
- 'group': associated to a set of users you belong to, for example 'staff', you can make the file readonly for your workmates or read-writable, depending on your whims (it might be that the video editor you are using sets the group tag as readonly for default security). Eg. you could easily create two groups: 'parents' and 'kids' for uses you imagine.
- 'world': any user (readonly for all users, if needed).

Are you in jaguar? The info panel lets you control this easily and via GUI. Play with it, logging in and out with different users to see what happens. Once you get the grasp of it my explanation will seem ruefully inadequate and overcomplicated to you.

I think there is no need to write a cron job or applescript to control this (might be overkill).

dani++
 
I though there was a setting somewhere that allowed permissions to be ignored in specific drives.... Is this functionality gone or am I missing something.

I clearly remember that in 10.1...
 
One other idea.

If your "Shared" folder is the central location for these "large" jobs that there are several people working on I am assuming that you will, at least at times, have large amounts of harddrive space taken up by these projects. This is kinda a way around something like this that i found by mistake actually and it was doing the opposite of what i was trying to get it to do. But, is what you are needing i think. This would be a pain to initially set up, but should give you what you need and the uesrs would not have to worry about anything under normal use.

Basically you will want to take a separate harddrive or partition on this harddrive and use the /etc/fstab file to mount the drive or partition in the /Users/Shared folder. This will be seamless for the users and what i have noticed with this is that because the "shared" directory would actually be a separate drive the "owner" of the drive would change to the current person logged in. At least this is what was happening with me when i was doing this. The only downside to this is two minor things. I have noticed that after a major system upgrade you have to restart the machine twice for the patition to be properly mounted again. Same thing after the computer crashes. You can manually mount it so you only have to restart once, but you would have to go into the command line to do it. The second downside is that if there are two people trying to access the file at the same time you might have troubles, maybe, i dont know for sure.

Anyways if you want to give it a shot check out this site.

http://ozzieburn.com/macos/x15/Custom HD mount points.shtml

or if that does not work, try the mac os section of

http://www.ozzieburn.com/

I hope this works for you.

jeffo
 
Why is it that when you save a document in OS X, it simply doesn't save the document with nobody as the owner, by default? Wouldn't that fix this problem? Is it just me, or is this a big bug on Apple's part?
 
File ownership is a Unix concept; OSX is, at it's core, a UNIX OS. When Apple decided to go that route, file ownership was part-n-parcel.

Still, it wouldn't kill them to make a system preference to - by default - create any new files with all permissions on, and let people turn them off when they want to.
 
(*
Here's an applescript droplet that will enable read & write access for everyone. Just drop files and/or folders on, and it will recurse the whole list & chmod 777 every single one.

It seems that this forum won't let me attach a Droplet, so instead, just paste the text of this message into Script Editor, and save it as an application:
*)
----------
on run
display dialog "Drop files or folders on me to enable all access"
end run

-- This droplet processes both files or folders of files dropped onto the applet
on open these_items
repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
set this_item to (item i of these_items)
set the item_info to info for this_item
process_item(this_item)
if folder of the item_info is true then
process_folder(this_item)
end if
end repeat
beep 2
end open

-----------------------------------------------------
on process_item(this_item)
set this_info to info for this_item
if (alias of the this_info is false) then
try
set myScript to "chmod 777 " & "\"" & (POSIX path of this_item) & "\""
do shell script myScript
set error_text to the result
if the number of characters of error_text > 0 then
display dialog error_text
end if
on error
beep
display dialog "Unknown error processing " & ¬
name of this_info
end try
end if
end process_item
---------------------------------------------
on process_folder(this_folder)
set these_items to list folder this_folder without invisibles
repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items
set this_item to alias ((this_folder as text) & (item i of these_items))
set the item_info to info for this_item
process_item(this_item)
if folder of the item_info is true then
process_folder(this_item)
end if
end repeat
end process_folder
 
Thanks for your trouble BH.
I could not get it to work though. I have been trying to perform the unix command chmod -r 777 /users/shared each time any user logs out , I cant make that work either , do you know how to set off a command like that on logout?
cheers!
 
Did anyone mention BatchMod yet? Check versiontracker.com

Our solution was to make our main HD two paritions. The non-system partition was set to "Ignore Permissions" under the Get Info tab. You can't ignore permissions on the system drive. You could also do this for external firewire drives as wel as any other internal non-systme drive.

I am a permissions hater. They drive me freaking nuts. We are a small office with no need whatsoever for overly tight security. I want a sytem that is wide open (internally) to whatever kind of abuse I may want to throw it. Currently, you simply cannot do that in OS X. Very irritating.
 
Sorry you had trouble with the script --- I am attaching a stuffit file with my compiled Applescript app to this post - maybe that'll work better for you.

You might be able to create a UNIX shell script that will launch on *startup*, but I don't know about at shutdown. You might be able to make a script that would do the chmod and then do a shutdown for you, and use it INSTEAD of the shutdown command (I know, what a pain in the butt.) Not sure.

Anyhow, let me know if the new attachment works.
 

Attachments

  • changepermissionsscript.zip
    2.7 KB · Views: 4
One other suggestion - try adding an asterisk to the end of your command, and change your -r to -R:


chmod -R 777 /users/shared/*


It's not automatic, but should do it.
 
It looks like at least 4 people downloaded my script app - I'd love to hear whether anyone has had any success with it...
 
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