Audacity Issue with Network User accounts

With any network user, the following errors pops up when launching Audacity:

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Error Locking Temporary Folder

Audacity was not able to lock the temporary files directory. This folder may be in use by another copy of Audacity, Running two copies of Audacity may simulaneously cause data loss or cause your system to crash

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Also (the following error also happens with local (non network) account but launches anyway)

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The application "Audacity can’t be opened.

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Having encountered this kind of problem before, I suspect permissions, but the user is able to write to ~/Library/Application Support/, in fact the audacity folder and it’s SessionData folder is successfully created there.

If anyone knows how to set a new directory (without launching Audacity) please let me know. Setting it with the local admin only seems to set the folder to that user.

I would make it /Users/Shared/ or something on the local HD

Audacity is not recommended for use over a network. It doesn’t understand network delays, path management and permissions.

Koz

I’ve been running a mac lab for the last ten years, and we have always been able to make Audacity work with network accounts, so it’s strange that we are having issues with it now. In previous years we were even using NetBoot so even the application was running over the network with no problems. This year each client machine is a standalone install, except for the network logins, so the situation should be even more conducive to it working.

Every app that runs on OS X understands permissions by definition.

Can someone please point me to how to set the temporary folder without opening the app?

Open the audacity.cfg file in a plain text editor. By default it is located at ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/
Find the line that starts with TempDir=
and set the required path

Great! That works, I set the directory to /Users/Shared (local drive) and it opens. Although it still pops an error that Audacity can’t be opened, but after clicking ok it does open

Do you know where the audacity.cfg file is originally copied from? I’d like to edit it so any new users have the directory set, rather then having to edit every user.

Do you have experience programming?
The default path for the temp directory is hard coded into this file: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/blob/master/src/AudacityApp.cpp
You would need to modify that file and then compile Audacity from the source code.

Alternatively, you could perhaps write a script to ‘install’ a custom audacity.cfg file on each computer.

Great! That was most helpful. audacity.cfg was the ticket.

Made a kind of login hook:

made a .plist in /Library/LaunchAgents/ (system wide) which calls an audacity script placed in /Users/Shared
as well as an audacity.cfg file in /Users/Shared. audacity.cfg has the temp folder assigned as /Users/Shared

when users logs in, script is executed and audacity.cfg gets moved to their audacity preferences in ~/Library/Application Support/audacity

when audacity is launched, SessionData is created in /Users/Shared (local drive)

Still getting a “Audacity can’t be opened”, but it opens anyways.

So a bit crude, but it ‘works’ now

Thanks for the help