Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Access other users' folders via the Finder System
Statement of problem: You have a set of users that want shared access to each other's documents, pictures, and movies folders. The Unix groups system is designed to do exactly this, and if everyone grants group access privileges, then all members of the group can access the folders. In the Terminal, that is. In the Finder, I always see a little red minus sign on the folders in another user's directory, telling me I cant access them. Well, here is one way to get around this ... but I can't help feeling like there must be some official way to do this via NetInfo or something. So if you know another method, lets hear it!

Lets say user1, user2, and user3 already belong to the same group, staff. We can set the group permission to all their files like this:
chgrp -R g+wrX  staff  ~user1 ~user2 ~user3
That grants read, write, and execute access recursively to all the users' files and folders, to anyone in the group staff. You obviously can be more selective as needed. Now here is the trick that grants access in the Finder: Create a directory somewhere, such as /Users/Shared, for each of your users:
% cd /Users/Shared
% mkdir user1  user2 user3
% chmod g+wxr staff user1 user2 user3
% ln -s /Users/user1/* user1/
% ln -s /Users/user1/* user2/
% ln -s /Users/user1/* user3/
This step creates a set of Unix symbolic aliases that "mirror" the contents of each user's actual home directory. Now to use the Finder to access user1's stuff, go to /Users/Shared/user1. It will have everything you want, but no red minus signs on the folders barring your access.

Of course, this does not dynamically update the contents of the ~user* folder when the user adds new files and folders to the top level. But you can re-execute the above at anytime to refresh it, or for added kludge, please make a folder-action script to do it for you.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one ... there's an older hint with some similar, but not identical, discussion.]
    •    
  • Currently 1.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (3 votes cast)
 
[15,728 views]  

Access other users' folders via the Finder | 6 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Access other users' folders via the Finder' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Wouldn't this be a neat idea
Authored by: mzs on Jul 06, '04 12:50:13PM

It would be nice is in the Sharing pane in the System Preferences, if I could enable Personal File Sharing, but in the firewall close those ports. Then I could just click on the home folder of the user under Network in the Finder and enter a password. This way all the files would be created and accessed with the user id of that user and I would not have to play any tricks with permissions and what not. Maybe somebody has already figured this out? In any case with FUS it is not too much trouble to go and grab whatever I need when I need it.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Wouldn't this be a neat idea
Authored by: SOX on Jul 06, '04 03:23:26PM

Well you could do exactly what you suggested. enable personal fire sharing then close those ports in the firewall. You can do this.<p>
I'm not sure if you could then afp:// to local host or not.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Access other users' folders via the Finder
Authored by: SOX on Jul 06, '04 03:25:48PM

I see that the firewall control panel wont let you do this directly. But you coul dbypass the firewall control panel settings using either the command line firewall or using the GUI called Brickhouse.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Why make the symlinks?
Authored by: a1291762 on Jul 06, '04 09:24:27PM

I don't understand why you are creating symlinks...

Simply do the chmod then navigate into /Users -> user2 -> Documents (or whatever) and everything is fine.

By default, files you create are readable by others in your group. For Jag (perhaps also Panther if upgraded from Jag) this is the "staff" group. It's only the "default" directories that have bad permissions. An alternative is to rename each directory, create a new one and move all your files over. The new directory will have "group readable" permissions.

Note that Panther creates a group with the same name as your username (more like what Linux distros do). You need to use netinfo to set all your users to the staff group (and chgrp -R their home dirs) to get the same BSDish behaviour of Jag.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Why make the symlinks?
Authored by: SOX on Jul 06, '04 10:26:20PM

Uh try it. Or read the post. It does not work using the group permissions. That was the whole point.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Expired Hint
Authored by: SOX on Jul 06, '04 10:36:29PM

This hint has expired in usefulness. Apparently this behaviour has been changed in OSX since I originally submitted the hint. (which was before 10.3.3 and several other security patches). It now appears That you can access other users via the finder if the permissions are set for group access. Oddly, the red minuses still show up but you can never-the-less access the folders.



[ Reply to This | # ]