File system management when sharing photos/music with other users in Mac OS

I'm a new convert from the Windows world. I'm trying to setup multiple accounts for each user within my household. However, I'd like us to all share the same set of folders for photos within iPhoto and music in iTunes. Is it best to just used the "shared" folder instead of keeping them in the standard home directory and trying to share those folders with other users? What is the best approach to this. I would imagine most people do this for managing their music if not photos as well. Just trying to learn best practice on the file system management before I copy over gigs of files from my old PC.
Thanks much,
champlir

champlir
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. This might help with iPhoto.
There are two ways to share, depending on what you mean by 'share'.
If you want the other user to be able to see the pics, but not add to, change or alter your library, then enable Sharing in your iPhoto (Preferences -> Sharing), leave iPhoto running and use Fast User Switching to open the other account. In that account, enable 'Look For Shared Libraries'. Your Library will appear in the other source pane.
Remember iPhoto must be running in both accounts for this to work.
If you want the other user to have the same access to the library as you: to be able to add, edit, organise, keyword etc. then:
Quit iPhoto in both accounts
Move the iPhoto Library Folder to an external HD set to ignore permissions. You could also use a Disk Image or even partition your Hard Disk.
In each account in turn: Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting dialogue, select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new library location. From that point on, this will be the default library location. Both accounts will have full access to the library, in fact, both accounts will 'own' it.
However, there is a catch with this system and it is a significant one. iPhoto is not a multi-user app., it does not have the code to negotiate two users simultaneously writing to the database, and trying will cause db corruption. So only one user at a time, and back up, back up back up.
Finally: If you’re comfortable in the Terminal, and understand File Permissions, ACL’s etc., some folks have reported success using the process outlined here . (Note this page refers to 10.4, but it should also work on 10.5). If you’re not comfortable with the terminal, and don’t know an ACL from the ACLU, then you’re best doing something else... Oh, and the warning about simultaneous users still applies.
Regards
TD

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And once we successfully set this up, would we have to sync the shuffle via my sister's main account or could it be synced from any of them?
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The first part - sharing your music with other accounts - makes the music available to the other users on the computer.
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I think what I am asking is possible but I just can't get it. All I wanna do is share my Itunes library with my girlfriends account on the mac. So when she opens her Itunes on her account she can view and add to the songs in my itunes library. I manage to get it so she can view what I had by putting my itunes music in the shared folder but when I add songs to the library it doesn't update her library and when she tries to add songs to the library it says she does not have the correct authority. Please help.

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Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

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Hi,
Recently, I've been sharing my computer with my dad. I don't want him to use my account, since I have a lot of secret files and bookmarks on my profile. However, I would like to share all my music with him. What I did was to set the permission of my Music directory to 777 and using root create a symbolic link from my own account to his account. But then when I log into his account, it says the folder is corrupt.
Then I created a symbolic link from my music directory to /media/ and set the permission to 777. Again I tried to see if I can access it from my dad's account and got the same error.
What's the best way of creating common folders between users in a linux machine?
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Thanks
Last edited by mohtasham1983 (2009-11-05 22:06:03)

grey wrote:If I wanted to share it between different users, I wouldn't put it inside one particular users home directory. Just use a reasonable place that is not used by the system, like /usr/local/data, /var/shared or so, give it the desired permissions and that's it.
you are absolutely right and i recommend this as well.
grey wrote:The link will probably not work, because in order to read /home/yourname/music, you need to be able to read /home/yourname. That is even true if root created the link.
that is true for symbolic links, not bind mounts. a bind mounted dir doesn't care about the parent directories because your not traversing to it through a link, it's just 'there'. this is how i put folders under my ~ out on my http server.

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shatter5:
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Happy New Year
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sohairzaki

there may be 2 problem...
1> specify a target directory only, not with the file name.
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let us know your observation...
Let us TRY this | Mail me
My Blog :: http://quest4gen.blogspot.com/

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