Multiple Users EntourageX and Apple Mail: Unable to Access your Data
 

Multiple Users EntourageX and Apple Mail: Unable to Access your Data

I have avoided multiple users because my only need has been my wife's email and mine. Originally we both used Entourage which supports True multiple users with out OS Logins.

I migrated to Apple Mail and she has has stayed with Entourage but wants to switch at some point. I did finally create an additional OSX admin user... I considered using Miniswiitch from the people that used to make mail switch which manages multiple users with out OS login changes but did not want to depend on a utility that might cease to exist.

** In Any case I am using EntourageX version 10.16 with OSX 10.49 I made a copy of her mail Identity and moved it to Her Logins MS folder and it is seen by Entourage but it complains that the Data can not be accessed and suggests repairing the DB from Entourage which does not help. Neither does running OSX's repair permissions.

It is as if, the folder knows it belongs to the other admin user and does not have appropriate permissions under the other user.

Any Ideas?

1. Open up your Terminal (it is in /Applications/Utilities)
2. copy/paste the following
ls -al
3. make sure that there is a space after the -al. Now doublecheck this. There must be a space after the -al.
4. Now, drag the folder icon from your wife's Entourage Identity folder onto the Terminal window. You should see an automagically completed path to the Identity folder appear.
5. Hit Return.
6. Now, copy/paste the command and the results of the command to the forum for us to see.
7. For easier reading, enclose the text from the Terminal in [code] tags. <---Optional, but we'll appreciate it when we answer your query.

Trevor

When you say "True multiple users" let's be clear first about the terms Identity and User. Entourage creates multiple Identities and the OS creates Users. Entourage is not meant to be used by multiple people and is NOT a true multiple user. However, many users do share Entourage even with one Identity. The best choice is to set up a User account in System Preferences for yourself and your wife. Then use Fast User Switching to easily switch back and forth.

In Entourage you can set up two Identities, but to switch Identity you have to quit all Microsoft applications. With Fast User Switching you do not have to quit anything. So you can have one User and two Identities, or two Users and use whatever you want for email.

Next, you are not using the latest version of Entourage X. You need to update to 10.1.9. You also need to apply the workaround for Daylight Saving Time. Because Entourage X is no longer officially supported (End of Life), it was not updated for the new time change. See this page for applying the workaround. <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/articles/unofficial_dst_workaround.html>

You can buy Entourage 2004 fairly cheaply now because Entourage 2008 is due out later this year. Whatever you do I suggest using an email client that is updated for DST.

Thanx Trevor I will post from Terminal.

Diane thank you, but I am trying to get away from Entoruage. I realize there are differences between Identities and Users, but the concept is similar with logins and such.

anthlover, you need a space after the ls -al, then you need to leave the cursor on that line before dragging the folder. Also, the path you show should have it's spaces properly escaped, and I don't understand why it doesn't if you followed the directions I gave. In any event, this is now enough information for me to give you the correct command to copy/paste.

Please copy/paste the following into your Terminal, then show us the command and results:

ls -al /Users/-------/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/Office\ X\ Identities/Li-----\ L----/

Trevor

Edit: parts of the path obfuscated at anthlover's request.

l..:~ l...$ ls -al /Users/l...../Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/Office\ X\ Identities/L.....\....../
total 2228320
drwxr-xr-x 8 administ staff 272 Apr 20 21:36 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 li..... l........ 204 Apr 20 22:04 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 administ staff 6148 Apr 20 21:13 .DS_Store
-rw-r--r-- 1 administ staff 1140820464 Apr 20 20:30 Database
-rw-r--r-- 1 administ staff 17092 Apr 20 19:46 Database Cache
-rw-r--r-- 1 administ staff 12544 Apr 20 20:30 Mailing Lists
-rw-r--r-- 1 administ staff 12544 Apr 20 20:30 Rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 administ staff 12544 Apr 20 20:30 Signatures
l......:~ l.......$
I was not sure if you wanted the dir structure last time so I clipped it.

P.S. Is there a way that both users have equal access. I tried pasting the command from my user and got access denied.

Diane by the way I did update at your suggestion to 10.19. Did not help but its nice to be on the most current version available.

OK, the files are owned by administ (the actual name might be longer--maybe administrator?) when they should be owned by licettel. So the command for your Terminal to correct this issue is the following:

sudo chown -R herusername /Users/lic-----/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/Office\ X\ Identities/Li-----\ L----/

(where 'herusername' is her actual username, and where the actual path is used--I've obfuscated this a bit.)

Trevor

That did it.... Is there a way to keep that from happening again?

Also Is there a way that both users have equal rights. There both admin accounts not root. Root bad:)

Yes, as long as both users are in group 'staff', there is. Notice above that the groupname 'staff' owns all of those files. However, staff only has read access, based on the -rw-r--r-- (that's the permissions).

Permissions work like this (this is a simplified explanation, there's more complexity if you're interested):

The first character is either d for a directory or - for a file.

The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th characters are the read, write, and execute permissions for the owner.

The 5th, 6th, and 7th characters are the read, write, and execute permissions for the group owner.

And the 8th, 9th, and 10th characters are the read, write, and execute permissions for others.

So, -rw-r--r-- means that the owner can read and write, but the group and others can only read.

If you want to give both users equal rights, then you need to add write permissions to the group. The command to do that is:

sudo chmod -R 664 /Users/lic-----/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/Office\ X\ Identities/Li-----\ L----/

(Of course, the same caveats regarding the path as post#8 above apply.)

664 corresponds to -rw-rw-r--.

Trevor

Staff??
 

Thanx. Not sure what you mean about staff? Accounts I have created Inlcude Admin and L.

I would like both Users to have complete cross acess to each everything.... Not counting Root or Sudo stuff.

Almost forgot any idea how I created the problem in the first place and how I and others could avoid... doing such in the future.

ekk the Problem is back but now for Word Template. Is there any way I can make everything "Ours" I will have her mostly go back to our user for most Apps but it would be nice if everything could be ours.

ekkk I was trying to fix Office X and

I pasted sudo chmod -R 664 /Users/lic.... Now everything messed up , many apps ekk. up. Terminal says there is no home dir.

Help Please****

Just to summarize what broke. Office X Folder under both users. I replaced it from a back up. Now its good under Admin but Templates and such not updatable on L user.

Apple Mail does not know it was set up or where its user data is under L user fine under Admin

I would like to repair what broke but I also would like to know if there is no sane way to manage users. I am not Unix head. Apple does not inted for us to have to be Unix heads do they?

Look at the directory that you showed us:

First are the permissions: -rw-r--r--.

(For now, ignore that 1.)

Second, is the owner: administ.

Third is the group owner: staff. That's what I'm talking about--the group owner of the files in this folder are staff.

By default in OS X, everyone is a member of the staff group. (*I believe that this is true, and it's true on all of my Macs, but I've upgraded my computers from earlier versions of OS X, and Apple sometimes tweaks this type of thing.) You can see what groups you are a member of in the Terminal by entering the

groups

command.

If both usernames are part of a group such as staff, and the group has read and write permissions, then both users can access and use the files.

Trevor

Do you mean that you made everything inside her User folder chmod 664? As you've discovered, that's really a bad idea. This will take a huge amount of work to clean up.

First, read an explanation of how Permissions work:

A simple explanation: http://osxfaq.com/Tutorials/Learning...sions/index.ws

A more advanced explanation: Lesson 1:
http://osxfaq.com/Tutorials/Learning...x/ugp/index.ws

A more advanced explanation: Lesson 2:
http://osxfaq.com/Tutorials/Learning.../ugp2/index.ws

Also, please refer to the Unix tutorial here: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=40648

After reading these, you should understand how to fix the permissions. Compare the permissions of your User to those on your wife's account, and issue the (many) commands to fix the account up.

For example, her home directory needs to be fixed:

sudo chmod 755 /Users/lic-----

Note that I didn't use the -R (recursive) flag on the command--you need to go fix things up individually.

Now, go through individual directories inside and fix them to correct permissions. I won't kid you--this is a lot of work.

Trevor

More Info
 

Thank you. I do:) want to learn but as we noted in our emails too this is of value too to many. And I am also a new dad so not sure how much time I have ....

1) Not counting the new mess I made. ??? How did that happen, how to avoid.

*****I simply orignally made a new user with Admin this computer writes, but had the Entourage User Permissions issue you helped me fix:)


2) Is there a Graphical Dir/Folder Permissions Util etc provded by Apple or anyone that would keep one from making a mess as I did.

3) As I noted I repaired Office by replacing it. Really the only thing she cared about was about 12 hours of Sent Items in Apple mail. I suppose I could try to repair it for fun but I am more likely going to to blow away that user when done and start over (though now my wife is gun shy about bothering, especially after I temp locked her out of Office under both users by acciddent).

1. Well, you used the advice about permissions that was very specific to one folder, and applied it on everything inside the Home directory. It was most definitely not appropriate for everything, in fact it will screw the permissions of everything up. Permissions are not one size fits all.

Commands that begin with sudo are ones that give you temporary root privileges. With root privileges, these are commands that have the potential to do anything to your computer, including screwing it up. And therefore, they carry danger.

2. I'm not exactly sure what you are asking. Disk Utility > First Aid tab > Repair Permissions will fix a small subset of the permissions on your computer if they get screwed up, but I don't believe that they will do much of anything in the situation you are in now. However, if you wish to experiment with that function, go ahead.

Apple also gives you a simple GUI to the permissions using the Get Info dialog box. You can set readability, writability, and some ownership. Is that what you are asking about?

3. To repair permissions for her Apple Mail, you can copy/paste the following commands in this specific order while logged in to her user:

cd ~
sudo chmod 700 ~/Library
cd ~/Library
sudo chmod 700 ~/Library/Mail
cd ~/Library/Mail
sudo chmod 644 DefaultCounts
sudo chmod 644 Envelope\ Index

...continue by executing a sudo chmod 644 to all files. Then, sudo chmod 700 all directories. Continue by going into all directories, and executing a sudo chmod 644 to all files in them, and a sudo chmod 700 to all directories in them.

Trevor

Progress...
 

Neat, I see that Get Info allows alot of control including ownership.
Had forgotten about that.... Seen it but it had not Registered in my mind.

I had meant a Utility that let you handle groups of folders, but get info will certainly suffice for many.

I can try what you gave me as I mentioned though the system reports that L. user has no home directory.

I was aware of the Sudo danger just thought I had been more careful then I was, spilt milk now. Thats what backups are for.

Home Dir thing is an issue. I kept getting dir not found using your commands one @ a time copy and pasted..

Is it safe to just kill the user L.

Look in the /Users directory. Is her user listed? You can either look in the GUI, or on the command line with
ls -al /Users

Trevor

Shoot I did NOT see this reponse fast enough. I Deleted the user a few hours after you posted it though I allowed OSX to same the Home Dir such that it was to a Deleted users dir. **** The Home went AWALl when I did the CHMOD in the wrong place.

total 520
drwxrwxr-t 8 root admin 272 Apr 24 22:36 .
drwxrwxr-t 351 root admin 12036 Apr 23 23:46 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 administ admin 6148 Dec 15 19:35 .DS_Store
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 0 Mar 20 2005 .localized
drwxrwx--- 4 root admin 136 Apr 24 22:33 Deleted Users
drwxrwxrwt 10 root wheel 340 Jan 25 20:14 Shared
drwxr-xr-x 34 administ staff 1156 Apr 20 22:10 administrator
-rw-r--r-- 1 administ admin 254924 Dec 9 22:39 directdeposit.pdf
[loverbook:~] administ%

** I still have the main same quesetion for myself and others.. What is it about Creating a New User with Admin the computer rights that can create the situation where MS Indentities and MS Office folder and who know what else was not shared correctly with both users.

I imagine now that I could have either used the commands you gave me more carfully after the Idenity fix, and or replaced the MS folder from a back up with both users present it would have proper rights, or I could have changed them from Get Info.

But the main questions is how did it break in the first place? Do both users need to be present before apps are installed. Is it just an anomaly?

In a normal setup, you don't want other users on a computer to be able to read your mail. It was not broken, it was properly set to not allow something that most people don't want set.

If you want to allow another user to read your mail, as you do, then you need to set the permissions that way.

Trevor