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FileMaker under Executor



FileMaker and a few other programs (Finale comes to mind) want to  
write scratch files at the top of the "volume" that they're found on.   
If you run them on a Mac, and you have a hard drive named "Disk", and  
you have FileMaker in a subdirectory named "FileMaker", the scratch  
files get written in "Disk" and not "FileMaker".

With our UNIX <--> Mac mapping this results in programs trying to  
write directly into the UNIX directory "/" or "/usr" instead of  
"/LocalApps/Executor.app/ExecutorVolume/FileMaker".

One way to diagnose such problems is to run the program once as root  
and see if it runs better.  If it does, then you need to find exactly  
where the scratch files are being written and then decide what to do  
about it.

You have a few choices.  You could always run that particular  
application as root.  Although this is the easiest solution, it's  
probably the worst.  Getting in the habit of running programs in root  
is a bad habit to get into.

Once you've figured out what directory you need access to, you may  
want to either change the ownership or the permissions on the  
directory.  BEWARE: If you give people "write" access to a directory,  
that allows the people with "write" access to both CREATE new files  
and to DELETE existing files.  If you want to allow creation, but not  
"deletion", you need to add "sticky" access to the directory.  To  
allow everyone to write new files into "/", but not to delete  
existing files (unless they're the owner), you could issue the  
following commands as root:

iclone# ls -ld /
drwxr-xr-x 25 root        1024 Dec 23 00:45 /
iclone# chmod a+w,+t /
iclone# ls -ld /
drwxrwxrwt 25 root        1024 Dec 23 00:45 /

The first command shows exactly what permissions "/" currently has,  
the second adds "w"rite to "a" and also adds s"t"icky to the  
directory.  The third command shows that everyone can indeed "w"rite  
to the directory and the "t" in "drwxrwxrwt" shows that the directory  
is indeed s"t"icky.

Most programs don't require this goofiness, most programs write  
scratch files either in the "System Folder", or in the directory that  
the program itself resides in.

I've spent a bit of time thinking about a way to trick these aberrant  
programs, but haven't figured out anything yet.

Happy Holidays.

	--Cliff