Best way to completely share iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes between 2 users?

Question

Hello everyone
I want to set up my new brandnew iMac (2.66 Intel Core 2) running Leopard the following way: Two accounts (for me and my wife) on the same iMac, no external drive. We want to completely share iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes libraries in a shared folder on the hard disk. That means we need full read, write and edit access to all files and subfolders in this shared folder. We will not use these libraries at the same time.
*What's the best way to do this?*
Thanks in advance for help or for pointing me to where I can find it!
Morgy
(On our old/current system (Panter), achieving this was quite tricky thing! A posting by Scott Radloff explained step by step how to use Netinfo, then Terminal and finally TinkerTool. I hope it's easier now!)

Answer 1

Sharing the iPhoto library via the Shared Folder cannot be done in 10.5.
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 dmg.
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.
Regards
TD