[Epicurus]

Just picked up a new iMac for the home. I have set up multiple accounts on the machine but wanted have iPhoto on all accounts share the same library. As far as I could see, iPhoto uses the users directory to store the photos which means they can't be accessed from another account. Can this be done?

[Rickster]

Yes, but it's not at all a procedure most home users can be expected to do, unfortunately.

First, you'll need to create a shared Pictures folder (/Users/Shared/Pictures for example), and set privileges on it so that everyone you want to share among can read and write there. Then, for each user you'll need to remove their individual Pictures folder and create a Unix symbolic link (not an alias) to the shared Pictures folder in its place. On the command line:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1"face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial">code:</font><HR><pre><font size=1 face=courier>
% ln -s /Users/Shared/Pictures /Users/myusername/Pictures
</font>[/code]

That'll get iPhoto to store all pictures in a common place, but there's still another problem: New image files iPhoto creates won't have write permission for anyone except the user who was logged in when the picture was downloaded from the camera (or whatever). I get around this by using the <font face = "courier">cron</font> scheduler to automatically change file permissions on a regular basis:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1"face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial">code:</font><HR><pre><font size=1 face=courier>
% sudo su
(enter password)
# setenv EDITOR pico
# crontab -e
(in pico, type the following line
@daily chmod -R ug+w /Users/Shared/Pictures
(then press ctrl-O, return, and ctrl-X to save and exit pico)
</font>[/code]
(If you're familiar with the <font face = "courier">vi</font> text editor, you can skip much of the above, and just do <font face = "courier">sudo crontab -e</font> instead. I suggest following the steps above to use pico if you're unfamiliar with Unix text editors, though, as it's easier to get started with.)

[Mithras]

Personally, I have set up a separate partition (called 'shared', cleverly enough), and checked the option 'ignore privileges on this volume' in the Finder.

I put the iPhoto library and the mp3 library on that partition, since as Rick noted, new files can otherwise only be changed or deleted by the user that made them.

His system seems like a nice idea, too, but I like mine, since it's easy to access the volume instead of digging through users/shared, and it's easy to mount via Appleshare as a separate volume.

[hotani]

or you could just type this from the terminal for every user that needs access to the common iPhoto library:

defaults write com.apple.iphoto RootDirectory "/directory-path"

where "/directory-path" is "/Users/Shared/pics" or something like that.

<small>[ 06-02-2002, 11:54 AM: Message edited by: hotani ]</small>

[Worst. Episode. Ever.]

You might try this little app...

<a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=13532&db=mac" target="_blank">http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=13532&db=mac</a>

I haven't tried it myself, so I don't know how well it works.