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User profile for user: Rick Wall
Rick Wall Author
User level: Level 1
10 points

Accessing other user's folder

OK. I have 2 accounts set up on my Macbook - my personal admin account and standard account for other people to use. The thing is, anybody logged into the standard account can view any of my personal folders, but from my administrator account, the standard accounts folder are only dropboxes so I can't access what's inside. It seems to me like this should be the other way around. I setup a separate account for my friends mostly so that my personal account would be private. How can I reverse this? Is there a way I can make new accounts default to letting me view their folders from the admin account and not letting them see my admin folders?

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Mar 25, 2010 7:00 PM

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User profile for user: baltwo
baltwo
User level: Level 9
62,362 points

Posted on Mar 25, 2010 10:36 PM

You've gotten it right, the process is reversed. Delete the standard account, launch Disk Utility, and repair permissions. Create a new standard account and ensure that autologin is disabled. Boot into the standard account and see if the problem persists.
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User profile for user: Rick Wall
Rick Wall Author
User level: Level 1
10 points

Apr 1, 2010 11:06 AM in response to baltwo

I tried deleting the standard account and repairing disk permissions yesterday. No change.

I also went through the permissions on my admin's main folders and made sure that they were said other users didn't have access. Some of the folders now appear as dropboxes, but a few are still completely open. I can log into Standard and when I open my Admin folder there, all but 4 folders are dropboxes. The 4 that aren't dropboxes includes my documents folder. I can view everything in the documents folder from the Standard account, even though when I "get info" on the folder, I can see that the permission says everyone except the Admin has no access to it.

I made another Admin account as you suggested (this new admin account is called "Test"). When logged into Test, all of the Standard account folders are dropboxes and all of the Admin folders are dropboxes except for the same 4 that are open on the Standard account. When logged into Standard, all of the Test folders are dropboxes and all of the Admin folders are dropboxes except for the same 4 again. When logged into Admin, all of the Standard folders are dropboxes and all of the Test folders are also dropboxes.

That's where I'm out right now.

Oh. I'm still on the same Macbook Pro with 10.6.3 now. I didn't realize it said "macbook with 10.5.5" yesterday.
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User profile for user: baltwo
baltwo
User level: Level 9
62,362 points

Apr 1, 2010 11:51 AM in response to Rick Wall

Strangest thing I've ever read about. I'd do this, but have no idea if it will clear things up. Delete all but the main admin account, launch the Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/), copy & paste this command into the window that pops up, hit the return key, at the Password: prompt, carefully type in your admin password because it won't show up on the screen, and hit the return key:

*sudo chown -R `id -un`:`id -gn` ~*

then, copy & paste this one in, and hit the return key:

+chmod -RN ~/*+

Create another standard account, log into it, and see if the problem's solved. If not, delete the account, boot with the Snow Leopard install disc, reinstall the OS, and see if that fixes things. If so, run Software Update, install all the updates until there aren't any more, repair permissions, and restart.
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Accessing other user's folder

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