I have two users on my mac which both share the same Kodi data folder /Users/Shared/Library/Kodi/
The two users are part of the same group staff. Xbmc is the first user and auto-logins to the desktop and launch Kodi so that everyone in the house can access the media centre, the second user Teek has a password but has access to the same shared Kodi data folder and addons.
I seem to be running into issues in general I think because of the two users and permissions. For instance Kodi never exits cleanly, it always crashes on exit. The main issue seems to be happening with Addons. Sometimes they just wont install or they'll fail when ever I try to launch them.
My version of Kodi Library uses MySQL on a seperate NAS drive but I don't think this really matters. I'm running Kodi Helix 14.1 on OS X 10.10.1.
I've attached a recent kodi.log from Console.app
http://xbmclogs.com/pxwseeji5
The Kodi data folder is not /Users/Shared/Library/Kodi but "/Users/enwhat/Library/Application Support/Kodi" as of that log (which doesn't match the usernames you mentioned at all).
There is no way to share the userdata folder between different users of the operating system afaik. (did you symlink the folders from each user to " /Users/Shared/Library/Kodi" or how did you try to achieve this?)
Apologies I was thinking I of a different computer user. The path /Users/enwhat/Library/Application Support/Kodi is correct and the second user is called enwhat and not teek.
I'd set up the folder is a syslink. So /Users/enwhat/Library/Application Support/Kodi -> /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Kodi. This is the same in the folder /Users/xbmc/Library/Application Support/Kodi -> /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Kodi
There is a way to accomplish want you are trying to do. In my case, I put the XBMC folder in /Users/Shared (/Users/Shared/XBMC). I make sure the permissions are usable by all users so I select the Shared folder, press CMD-I. I then select the little lock at the bottom of the window and select apply to all folders. For each user I create a smbolic link in their account "~/Library/Application Support/XBMC" -> /Users/Shared/XBMC.
I have been using this approach for several years now and it works very well.
(2015-03-24, 19:19)winestock Wrote: [ -> ]There is a way to accomplish want you are trying to do. In my case, I put the XBMC folder in /Users/Shared (/Users/Shared/XBMC). I make sure the permissions are usable by all users so I select the Shared folder, press CMD-I. I then select the little lock at the bottom of the window and select apply to all folders. For each user I create a smbolic link their account "~/Library/Application Support/XBMC" -> /Users/Shared/XBMC.
I have been using this approach for several years now and it works very well.
Winestock, are you able to install and run adons without any issue using this setup? I think my setup is pretty much identical to yours. But installing adons seems to cause issue as they set their own child permissions which more often than not don't allow group write or execute permissions. Usually only write and execute permissions are given to the owner of the file. This seems to be causing the majority of issues when trying to share the a Kodi data folder across two users. AFIK you can't have two users owning a file?
The only addon I use is Apple Trailers. I have not had any permissions issues. I think as long as you keep the permissions like I described in my previous post there should be no issue.
The permissions that is set for /Users/Shared should allow any user to acces files in that area. Keep in mind that the Shared folder is there for all to use or share.
The problem is when kodi creates new files in that subfolders i guess. Those might not inherit the rights from the top folders. At least thats what it sounds like from the OP.
A heads up if your downloading media for playback in Kodi with the Google Chrome webbrowser.
(OSX Yosemite)
The media files saved with Chrome will have permissions "everyone" set to "No Access". This causes playback problems when trying to access this media over a Network from another Kodi client. It took me goddam ages to finally track this issue down. I was pulling my hair out, and I don't have much !
Safari saves such media files correctly and has no such permissions issues.
I've been looking at this issue again recently.
One of the issues causing Kodi problems is to do with the log files still being created in the respective users $HOME dir. So ~/Library/Logs. And as far as I've seen there's no way of changing where Kodi saves it's logs or to system link them to one central location.
So I see two solutions.
- Use rysnc to make sure Kodi Userdata folders are kept in sync. This will mean duplicate data on the HDD and seems inefficient to me.
- Use a bash script to constantly reset the chmod permissions and reset the owner:group for all files recursivly . Seems more efficient.