[OS X TeX] II and user profile

Alex Hamann Alexander.Hamann at stud-mail.uni-wuerzburg.de
Sat Sep 30 13:08:22 EDT 2006


Am 27.09.2006 um 17:26 schrieb Gerben Wierda:

>> A question that has crossed my mind several times before even though
>> the answer might be pretty obvious:
>> Does it have any importance at all for the integration of the
>> packages and the functionality of I-installer and tex wether in order
>> to update packages I use my normal user account or my admin account?
>
> The short answer is: not really.
>
understood :-)

> The long answer is:
> - As different users have different locations for their i-Packages,  
> using
> one or the other may mean different amounts of downloads to get them
> up-to-date and usable for your intended goal (goal = e.g.  
> installing or
> configuring).
> - i-Installer runs as much as possible without the system  
> administrator
> privileges. E.g., an i-Package that installs in a system-wide location
> will run the unarchiving and configuring as system administrator,  
> but not
> the downloading, checking or checksums, listings and all other stuff.
> i-Installer will only go to system administrator mode if it has to.  
> In all
> cases you will need to authenticate.

guess that was the answer I was looking for. Thx!
However I have noticed that on my system I-Installer will not update  
its own package information when I install packages with my non-admin  
user account, meaning that even though I updated it shows me the  
previous-to-update-version in the package information (II only  
updates its own menus when I use my admin-account for the  
installation process).
Running "open updated i-Packages" seems to read the packages  
correctly, though. Since even with the wrong information displayed in  
I-Installer it will not bring up with packages needing an update.
(hm, I hope that was understandable)

> - There are three types os users on your Mac OS X system:
>    - A non-admin user
>    - An admin user
>    - The system administrator ("root", an account normally not  
> possible to
> login as)
>     *Never* run any application as root and do not enable the root
> account, because it will not need to authenticate (as it already is
> superuser on your system) so you will not even notice when *potential*
> dangerous things happen.
... right, the golden rule  ...
>     When you run as an admin user, you can become system  
> administrator for
> a subprocess via your own password and you can write in certain
> locations without authentication.
>     When you run as non-admin user, you can become system  
> administrator
> via a admin username and password.
>     i-Installer i-Packages that require authentication go through  
> Apple's
> Security Framework to get the privileges required.


>



> So, there are some fundamental differences which normally do not  
> result in
> any changes to the installed software. Hence "not really".
>
> G
>
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