dvdpedia with multiple osx accounts

[Ted L. Nancy]

My wife and I share our Mac Pro. We each have our own OSX login. I would like DVDpedia (the settings, preferences, library, etc.) to mirror itself between accounts (i.e. I always want it to look the same and to reflect any changes made under each account). Is there a way to do this?

[marumari]

You could try this?

Bring up Terminal.app for the user who doesn't have the DVDpedia account

Code: Select all

cd Library/Application\ Support/
ln -s ~otheraccountname/Library/Application\ Support/DVDpedia DVDpedia

That should probably keep things mirrored between you two. I haven't tried it, though. Replace "otheraccountname" with the short name of the other user's account (in my case, the two account names are "april" and "tracy"). Perhaps Nora/Conor have a simpler solution, though?

[Ted L. Nancy]

Is there another method? I think I did it right, but doesn't seem to be doing anything.

[Nora]

Try moving the DVDpedia data folder into a shared location such as the Public folder, where both users would have access to it. By default the DVDpedia folder is located in your Home folder under ~/Library/Application Support/DVDpedia. Then make a copy of the DVDpedia plist file from your Home folder under ~/Library/Preferences/com.bruji.dvdpedia.plist and move it into the exact same location for the other user. (Make sure neither copy of DVDpedia is running while you do this.)

[Ted L. Nancy]

Ok, I've got the database being shared. Thank you.

The preferences is another story. I copies the prefs file from my Preferences folder to the other, but when I opened DVDpedia from my wife's account, it opened with what appeared to be default preferences settings.

[Ted L. Nancy]

Ok. Now I have a problem with the database sharing.

I tried to open DVDpedia from my account and it gave me an error message saying that the database belongs to another user. I checked the permissions. The DVDpedia folder and all of its contents in the Application Support folder has my wife's account listed twice for read/write access. Whenever I try to add myself for access on any of the files, it changes one of the listings for my wife's access to mine with read only. I change that to read/write, close the window, but the problem persists. I go back and check the permissions and they are listed as my wife twice again.

Not sure what that Terminal command line did, but if it is responsible, is there a way to undo? If not that, what could be going on?

[marumari]

Code: Select all

cd Library/Application\ Support/
rm DVDpedia

Would undo the terminal command.

[Ted L. Nancy]

Thanks.

I actually now think the permissions problem is a deeper issue. Some other files and folders, which originated in my wife's home folder, but that I had copied to mine (which I also did with the DVDpedia stuff), is doing the same weird permissions stuff.

[Kernos]

Well, I have not gotten data sharing a work placing for Bookpedia or DVDpedia and modifying permissions for all users to have RW access, at least in the /Users/Shared folder/ and applying permissions to all enclosed items. I have even tried putting alias's to ~/Library/Application Support/pedias in the Shared folder. Doesn't work.

I don't think the pedias know where to look for the data, if it is not in the ~/Library/Application Support/ folder.

The pedias need to have a preference so one can point to the data folder and allow users to put it where they want, and let the pedias handle permissions. Most users are totally confused by permissions. I know what I am doing generally and cannot get it to work.

I consider this a major drawback to the Pedias. At the very least Bruji should publish a recipe, a step by step guide on how to share the data between users on a machine or on a network - here, in a ReadMe and in the pedia Help.

Shame on you!

[Conor]

Hi Kernos,

Copying the entire "DVDpedia" folder to a shared location and double clicking the Database.pediadata inside should be enough to tell DVDpedia that this is the data you want to load from this new location (it will remember in the preference to always open this folder). To explicitly tell DVDpedia what data to use on startup you can also launch while holding down the option key to get the chance to point to the location you would like to use. Also for a step by step you can find it on our support site and our knowledge base is also a good resource (will be linking that from the help in an updated help we are working on).