Share an iPhoto4 Library between two or more users

Jan 29, '04 10:26:00AM

Contributed by: jnm

I used to share the same iPhoto Library with my wife, using a standard unix symbolic link so that the folder "iPhoto Library" in my wife's home folder was actually a symbolic link pointing to my real folder in my home, and regularly change access rights to all files in the folder to allow my wife to work on it.

This hack is broken with iPhoto4, as it resets owner and access rights of the AlbumData.xml file. I found a simple solution to fix this issue, provided you have a volume onto which you disabled access rights :

  1. Copy your iPhoto Library folder to the volume with access rights disabled. The iPhoto Library folder stands in your home folder, under the folder Pictures.
  2. Rename your original iPhoto Library folder to "iPhoto Library - old" (in your home folder, under the folder Pictures).
  3. This is the tricky part : for each of the users, open the Terminal application (in Applications/Utilities), and type the following commands :
    % cd Pictures
    % ln -s /Volumes/YOUR_VOLUME_HERE/iPhoto Library
    
Now every user iPhoto Library is a link that points to the real iPhoto Library which is on the Volume with access rights disabled, et voila !

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