DP won't launch under different user account

[Henry Robinett]

Anyone have any tips for getting DP 5.13 to launch under another user account? I've set up an old G4 in my tracking room.I want to have separate user accounts for the computer. Everything seems OK, except DP won't launch on this other account. I have no problem when I do it at home. I can launch under different accounts. Tomorrow I'll try setting it up again, under a new user and password.

I've tried changing the ownership and permissions for DP in various ways. Nothing seems to work. Shouldn't this just launch, like other applications, for different users?

[Henry Robinett]

It says "access denied - insufficient privileges." Obviously I own it. I just tried to set up another account on my PB. Same thing. "access denied - insufficient privileges." Ideas? Help?

[Frodo]

There are various user plist preferences files required which are found in the User Library> Preferences folder in various places.

Did you install DP in the new account?

[Henry Robinett]

No. I haven't installed it since I originally installed it on the computer. The new user accounts were newer since DP install. Should I trash it and reinstall? Then to DP 5.13 update? That's a minor PITA.

[Henry Robinett]

There are various user plist preferences files required which are found in the User Library> Preferences folder in various places.

Did you install DP in the new account?

Any idea what these plist preferences need to be, or anything more specific in terms of "various places" or where I can find out more about their settings for DP?

[Frodo]

No. I haven't installed it since I originally installed it on the computer. The new user accounts were newer since DP install. Should I trash it and reinstall? Then to DP 5.13 update? That's a minor PITA.

Yeah, it's a bit of a pain, especially when it gets down to any user preferences pertaining to third-party plugins and VIs.

If you have saved all of your DP5.1x updaters, it really won't take very long. Start with the CD to install DP in your new user account, then run each successive update up to and including 5.13.

If you haven't saved your DP 5.1x updaters, I would get all of those downloaded first and ready to go. You can initiate all the downloads concurrently to save a bit of time.

Any idea what these plist preferences need to be, or anything more specific in terms of "various places" or where I can find out more about their settings for DP?

If you look in the User Library> Preferences folder, you'll see a long list of files akin to this:

'com.motu.DigitalPerformer.plist'

You will notice that all of files starting with 'com....' will included some part of the product name installed. So if you have various plugins or instruments, their plists will also be found in this long list.

There are other plists and prefs in this list such as 'Model12 Preferneces' and 'Modulo.patches', plus other files for Nanosampler, Polysynth, Proton, and so on. I wouldn't advise manually copying/moving these files to your new user Library>Preferences folder. It's too easy to miss something.

[Henry Robinett]

Frodo -- thank you. So just making sure I have this straight. It doesn't make sense to me to install AGAIN,in my new user account, when it's already installed. So -- hm. Do I trash the application and then install all over again? Ad what happens to it when I want to launch it in my primary account? Will I have the same problem? Sorry if all of this sounds too dumb. But since I've only ever been one user I've never had this issue before.

Also the com. stuff. Do you mean I should copy those over from the primary to the new user library->prefs folder? Just not the nanosampler, Modulo 12 type of files, right?

[Frodo]

Frodo -- thank you. So just making sure I have this straight. It doesn't make sense to me to install AGAIN,in my new user account, when it's already installed. So -- hm. Do I trash the application and then install all over again? Ad what happens to it when I want to launch it in my primary account? Will I have the same problem? Sorry if all of this sounds too dumb. But since I've only ever been one user I've never had this issue before.

Also the com. stuff. Do you mean I should copy those over from the primary to the new user library->prefs folder? Just not the nanosampler, Modulo 12 type of files, right?

Hi Henry:

I think the easiest thing to do would be to use the DP disc to uninstall it from the OLD user account (which will uninstall it from the Root Directory as well). Then, start up with the new user account and install DP there the same way you did when you installed and authorized it before. All of those plists and preferences will take of themselves.

This will not effect your projects.

When you add the new user account it's like adding a new room onto your house, but the new room has no doors or windows right now.

[scott dansby]

I had a similar problem recently with DP 6, but it was with plugins that I was using with it and not the program itself. You may try what I did to resolve it because it is very easy. So what you should try is right clicking DP in its hard drive folder and then open up the Get Info option. Under Ownership and Permissions open the Details option. From there you can set the Owner and if you select Systems you can use it for any user on your computer. I hope this helped.

[michkhol]

Most likely you have to make all DP preference, support files and relevant directories in the /Library group-writable. So you create a user group, put all your DP accounts in there and assign this group to the files. Also you need to set the group and group ID flag for the DP binary itself to make all files created by DP also writable by that group. I never needed it myself but this is what I usually do on a UNIX-like system for shared access. Most people don't have problems because they use an account in the 'admin' group with administrative privileges (which is a high security risk) and DP has the 'admin' group by default. I know that it is a PITA, but the only alternative is to make everything writable by anyone and I don't think you would want that.

[michkhol]

From there you can set the Owner and if you select Systems you can use it for any user on your computer. I hope this helped.

That's not quite right. Setting the owner does not give you any additional permissions. Normally any program runs under permissions of the account which runs it, unless the SETUID flag is set. In the latter case the program runs with its owner permissions. The same thing works for a group. It is not possible to set the SETUID flag from the Apple GUI.