Folder permissions question

[J. Landman Gay]

Shari wrote:
> I have a permissions problem that occurs once in a great while when 
> people install my standalone on their computer.  This doesn't happen often.
> 
> I do not use an installer.  The program is zipped or stuffed, depending 
> on the platform.  The folks unzip/unstuff it and put it wherever they 
> want on their computer.
> 
> 99% of the time, the game folder installs properly.  Every so often 
> however, the folder permissions are set to Read Only, and the game 
> cannot update its own files, causing problemos.  I have no clue as to 
> why this happens to some folks.
> 
> Has anyone else experienced this?  And is there a solution?  At one time 
> I had the following set during install, but later took it out:
> 
> get shell("chmod 777 " & quote & theDirectory & quote)
> 
> theDirectory being the full path to the game folder that they are 
> installing.
> 
> Do I need to put it back in?
> 
> Shari

I just had this in a client's stack where data is being saved to the 
main system library/application support folder. It works fine when 
running as an admin account, but fails when a non-admin user tries to 
run the software. The solution is for the admin account to change 
permissions on that folder so that non-admin users can access it. (This 
is on OS X.) I suppose the shell command would work too, but if a 
non-admin is installing to the main applications folder, then you'll 
need sudo in there somewhere, I think. Our solution was just to tell the 
user to log in as admin and give his other accounts permissions to 
access the folder. The situation was rare enough that a manual solution 
was acceptable.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com