Users Accessing All Files - 2 Accounts

Question

Hi everyone,
My wife and I share the same iMac for work. On occasion, when one of us tries to to open a file created by the other user we get a -5000 error, which is "access denied". I know about setting up a shared folder, but I would like the entire drive and its contents to be accessible by both user accounts, which are both admin. Can this be done? I have seen posts warning about changing permissions on the entire drive, so I'm being cautious since this machine is used for work.
TIA,
Mike

Answer 1

Here's what I recommend:
1) Go to System Preferences -> Accounts and create a new user with Admin privileges.
2) Log out of your other accounts and into the new Admin account.
3) Open up System Preferences -> Accounts, and uncheck "allow user to administer this computer" for both your and your wife's accounts. Read biovizier's testimonial below on why it is not a good idea to use an Admin account for everyday use.
3) While in the Admin account, go to /Users/Shared, and make a new folder inside called "sharefolder" or something similar.
4) Apply Access Control Lists (ACLs) on your new shared folder to give both you and your wife full read-write access to everything placed inside from this point forward. This can be done by launching Terminal from your new Admin account and entering:
sudo fsaclctl -p / -e (this turns ACLs on on your boot volume)
Paste in all three lines of this at once, replacing USERNAME with the short user name of your regular account:
sudo chmod +a "USERNAME allow delete,chown,list,search,add_file,\
addsubdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directoryinherit" \
/Users/Shared/sharefolder
Repeat that last step, replacing USERNAME with the short user name of your wife's account.
Now anything you save in /Users/Shared/sharefolder will be automatically readable and writable by both you and your wife. But do take care to COPY any PRE-EXISTING files to that folder; don't MOVE them there. The ACL settings are only applied if the files are newly created inside the folder; they won't stick if the files are previously existing elsewhere on the boot volume and moved in.
If you want to completely open up all of the contents of both your home folders to each other and make everything readable and writable (which I don't recommend), just enter this into Terminal as well, replacing USERNAME accordingly:
sudo chmod +a "USERNAME allow delete,chown,list,search,add_file,\
addsubdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directoryinherit" /Users/USERNAME
When done, log out of the Admin account. You'll find that you will hardly if ever need to use it again. Nearly all admin and even root tasks can be done inside your non-admin account just by authenticating with the admin username and password when prompted.
eMac   Mac OS X (10.4.7)