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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users Apps
I wrote up a step-by-step guide that describes how to share one iPhoto library among several users on one machine. This guide is for you, if you ...

  1. want to share one iPhoto library on the SAME computer between two or more users on that machine
  2. want all users participating in this sharing to have full rights to the library (rotate, crop, create albums, burn etc....)
  3. do not want to create/use a extra partition for the purpose, which is the requirement behind the previously published hint here

It follows the technique established in my previous hint on howto share an iTunes library among several users on one machine.

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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: dsouth on Mar 25, '04 01:39:11PM

Interesting hint.

A quick warning though, the SUID root script appears to be insecure. It would allow anyone to make any file on the computer group writeable. A nefarious user could use the`ln` command to create a hard link from some file they wanted to change/delete (say /etc/passwd) to new file someplace in the shared library, then run the SUID script. Once the script has run /etc/passwd (or whatever) can be modified, and your machine has been compromised. SUID scripts are evil.

Granted, this may not be a concern for many, and only staff can run the SUID script, but I thought it was worth mentioning.



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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: david.frank on Mar 25, '04 03:55:01PM

much simpler: if you have multiple partitions, move your iPhoto library to another partition and turn off permissions for that partition, then make a normal alias from your ~/Pictures folder to the moved 'iPhoto Library'



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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: koncept on Mar 25, '04 05:19:57PM

read number 3 again...



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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: tjp on Mar 25, '04 11:27:19PM
I've been looking for a good answer to this problem for some time but I too am concerned about the use of an suid root script in this particular solution. I think I've come up with one that's close to this but much simpler. Do all of the same things for moving the iPhoto library to a commonly accessible location but skip all of the shell script and AppleScript stuff. Instead, open a Terminal window and enter the following:
cd /Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/MacOS
sudo chown iPhoto_Library_owner_short_name *
sudo chmod u+s *
So, assuming the user that owns this iPhoto library has a short name of dad, a long listing of this directory would look like:
ls -l
-rwsrwxr-x  1 dad  admin  1931776 21 Mar 22:47 iPhoto
-rwsrwxr-x  1 dad  admin   271300 21 Mar 22:47 iPhotoDPAPService
-rwsrwxr-x  1 dad  admin    71820 21 Mar 22:45 photocd
Now, this still uses the set uid bit but instead of running iPhoto as root with suid root scripts (and all the security issues that brings), any user on the system will run the core iPhoto executables as the (unprivileged) user that owns the shared library, no matter who they are. This means all files edited or created within the library will be owned by the same user, no matter who actually ran iPhoto.

Also note that this leaves the group assignment for the iPhoto executables as admin, preserving the ability of any authorized admin account to update the software.

This is also better for me than the "Ignore ownership on this volume" solution because, not only does my wife need to use this system (and the iPhoto library), but my eight year old son does as well and even though I have my photo library on a separate partition, there's a bunch of other stuff there that I don't want him to be able to trash. Sure he could go into iPhoto and mess that up but there's a point at which, if you want this kind of flexibility, you just have to stop chasing your tail.

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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: captnswing on Mar 26, '04 02:31:52AM

i like this, this is almost the neatest solution, if not for two drawbacks:

1) you have to reapply the patch, everytime you update iPhoto (granted, thats not too often)

2) you have to reapply the patch, after everytime you ran "repair volume permissions"

not too bad, but it seems that each approach has _some_ drawbacks. Hope apple comes forward with a solution that works without drawbacks one day



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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: 47ronin on Mar 26, '04 03:27:11PM

Put iPhoto Library on an external firewire hard drive. Have everyone symlink their iPhoto Library to /Volumes/nameofFirewireDrive/iPhoto\ Library

You're done.



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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: frankxiv on Jan 23, '05 02:35:01AM

You obviously missed the entire point of this tip. How would your method work for those of us with PowerBooks? Should we carry this firewire drive with us everywhere we go?



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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: eishak on Jan 28, '05 06:46:38PM

For one user, under "Get Info" for both the Pictures and iPhoto Library folders, I set permissions so that "Other" has both "Read and Write" permissions.

For the other user, simply point your iPhoto Library to the first user's iPhoto Library folder. It seems to work, and both users have write access to the photos.



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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: eishak on Jan 28, '05 06:57:16PM

whoops, seems that new albums don't seem to have write access without resetting permissions each time.



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Share an iPhoto library among multiple users
Authored by: frankxiv on May 09, '05 01:06:28PM

This is exactly the method I was going to try. When I read your reply I thought that the constant updating of permissions sounds like it might be a good job for automator. I am going to look into this when I have time.

Later, Frank



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