[OS X TeX] MacTeX - a few questions

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 24.02.2007 um 22:23 schrieb Bruno Voisin:

>> MacTeX doesn't change the permissions of /Applications/TeX if it  
>> already exists. The MacTeX package for gwTeX doesn't install  
>> anything in /Applications/TeX. Thus I conjecture that everyone  
>> reporting this permissions problem used i-Installer to obtain  
>> gwTeX sometime in the past.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean. I have the same problem as Frank and  
> Roussanka, namely I have to authenticate (being an admin) every  
> time I want to modify the content of /Applications/TeX. Not knowing  
> whether this is normal behaviour, I never reported it, but it  
> doesn't feel right.

This is the usual behaviour – when you're not the (co-)owner!

>
> Two more things:
>
> - For /Applications/TeX the permissions are:
>
> drwxr-xr-x   14 root      admin    476 Feb 13 09:14 TeX

Although you can be member of the group admin, you are not root when  
you work on your Mac. So you're primarily now allowed to change what  
you do not own. Changing the permissions of the TeX directory (g+w,  
775) would change quite everything: you would be now on the same  
level as the original owner.

MacTeX seems to be more user (= Mac owner) oriented, i-Installer is  
more like a system tool, like Apple's Installer (which reads from the  
package a description of permissions, which are also used by Disk  
Utility to check and repair permissions on the disk) – two worlds  
collide!

--
Greetings

   Pete

The human brain operates at only 10% of its capacity. The rest is  
overhead for the operating system.



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