OSX10.6 Administrator and account permissions

[dedee]

Can any mac users help?

I've just started to set up my daughter with her own user account on the Mac.
I have set up up as a Managed Account with Parental Controls.

My account is Admin.

I would like to move some documents from my user to hers but all of her folders come up with a No Entry sign and I am denied permissions.

Any ideas as to what I've done wrong?

Thanks

Andy

 

[RogerS]

You need to move via her public folder which is not blocked.

 

[ByronBlack]

Or put the files on an external drive/website/whatever and log into her account.

You can also do it via the terminal using 'sudo' and whatnot but that gets a bit tricky.

 

[dedee]

Roger,
I've tried to move documents to her public folder but I get a message stating "that the document could not be saved as I don't have permission. To change permission select item in finder and choose file > get info"

I am a little confused as I do not even have permission to view the contents of her folders.

According to the Missing Manual an administrator should be able to "open change or delete anyone else's file" but I cannot and don't understand why.

Andy

 

[studders]

Is it because you're not logged in as root but as a user who happens to have admin rights?

 

[dedee]

Studders,

If understand things correctly I should not need to have root or superuser access in order to open change or delete other user's files.

My account status is Admin and has been so since the OS was installed.

Am I misunderstanding what an Administrator can do?

Andy

 

[Eric The Viking]

Studders,

If understand things correctly I should not need to have root or superuser access in order to open change or delete other user's files.

My account status is Admin and has been so since the OS was installed.

Am I misunderstanding what an Administrator can do?

Andy

It's bog-standard BSD underneath the GUI, or at least it used to be.

You can use 'get info' (right-click if you have a 2-button mouse or Command-I to see and alter the file permissions such that anybody can read, write or execute them ('chmod to 777' in old-style UNIX).

It should give you a drop-down list for each file attribute (R,W,X), so you can select who can do what to/with the file.

When you've changed the permissions, put it in your shared folder. Daughter should be able to copy or move it from there.

I think that's right - haven't done it for ages. If it doesn't work I'll ask the kids: we have four operational Macs in the house, and they share stuff around all the time.

 

[studders]

Studders,


Am I misunderstanding what an Administrator can do?

Andy

Not 100% sure to be honest. It was just something I came up against when trying out Ubuntu. Though thinking about it I'm not sure the users are admin by default with that OS.

 

[RogerS]

Andy..sorry for the duff info. You use the Shared folder. Either move files there from your account or copy them there. Any other users can then get them from there.

Roger

 

[dannykaye]

assuming it is still unix...

the permissions come in three chunks, 777 represents owner, group, world so if you are set to 700 only the user can do anything, I think that order is right. So you need to set the permissions, ideally using file the manager equivalent, so the directories and files are 777. Don't forget that you can set your files so your daughter can read them, for example you need to set permissions on the parental control file for your web browser so she can read them but not write. so for example 744 sets owner everything group and world read only

 

[Chris Knight]

Andy,

If you enter your admin password when it asks for authorization it should work - if not use hers.