Audacity Forum

I tried installing lame and ffmpeg on one of the Snow Leopard machines that has multiple users and it didn't work at all. The two plugins installed with completely scrambled owners, groups, and permissions -- even though, if you read the permissions code rwxr_xr_x, the whole world should be able to read and execute the code...

I'm writing all this down.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:Do you two that have the pages and pages of problems have two or more users on your machine? It's possible if you have an actual "administrator" user on your machine in addition to you, this install won't work.

I'm trying this out on the Snow Leopard machines at work.

Yes I do have multiple users. But only me (admin) and two guest accounts with limited access. I'm running Snow Leopard as well, 10.6.4 to be exact.

I think it's fascinating that the FFMpeg and Lame installed with different owners and different groups -- and again different from the owner of Audacity.

And on my Leopard machine, all this went without a hitch. Badda-Boom, Badda-Bing. Export As > MP3 > OK > Done.

[time passes]

OK. On my personal machine, I have permissions to go read down the /usr/local/lib pathway. On the failed machines, I don't have permissions to do that. That will kill a user running Audacity (I'm guessing) from ever getting to either the lame or the FFMpeg software.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:I'm wondering if a non-administrator user can install lame and FFMpeg at all.

Actually, it's normal on Windows and Linux also to require elevated privileges to install programs or libraries.

kozikowski wrote:On my personal machine, I have permissions to go read down the /usr/local/lib pathway. On the failed machines, I don't have permissions to do that. That will kill a user running Audacity (I'm guessing) from ever getting to either the lame or the FFMpeg software.

We have recently made changes so that when released, 1.3.13 Beta should be be able to detect LAME and FFmpeg much easier even if there are other versions of LAME/FFmpeg on the system. See: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 10#p131208.

This will not help if some Snow Leopard systems do not allow read access to /usr/local/lib. You will have to try workarounds like resetting permissions or forcing access via Finder using elevated permissions. Or, move the libraries somewhere into your own user space then click "Locate..." in Audacity Preferences and browse for the location where you moved them to.

Leland and I have discussed the locations of the libraries extensively. As I pointed out in the above thread, we could install the libraries by default in a special folder in the "Applications" folder. All users could access the libraries without elevated permissions. It's very non-standard, and I think you do need to ask if the reason we may have to do this is our fault or Apple's.

For those who cannot install due to not having admin rights, I' would agree to provide a zip as well as a dmg for LAME and FFmpeg, if there is sufficient demand. We do that on Windows anyway.

When you say:

kozikowski wrote:tried installing lame and ffmpeg on one of the Snow Leopard machines that has multiple users and it didn't work at all. The two plugins installed with completely scrambled owners, groups, and permissions -- even though, if you read the permissions code rwxr_xr_x, the whole world should be able to read and execute the code...

Is this our fault or Snow Leopard's - that is, can someone try this "multiple users" scenario on Leopard?

vinylivo wrote: the new package installer just didn't update the older library

We will have to test this with SVN HEAD code.

I'll ask Leland to review this thread when he can.



Gale

Gale Andrews wrote: For those who cannot install due to not having admin rights, I' would agree to provide a zip as well as a dmg for LAME and FFmpeg, if there is sufficient demand. We do that on Windows anyway.

Honestly, I thought was had a zip version already. We should supply one for situations like these.

On multi-user systems, I would expect there to be an Administrator that maintains the system and that's the person that should be installing libraries such as these. If permissions are an issue for the users, then the Administrator should either correct them or provide an alternative solution, like maybe moving the libs from /usr/local/lib/audacity to some other location and have the users "Locate" the libraries from Preferences.

But, this really isn't a multi-user issue is it? It's Snow Leopard monkeying around with permissions. Googling shows that it's not just Audacity that has had problems with this. Even applications as big as MySQL has run into this.

Really, there is no good answer. Let's say we move the libraries to /opt/audacity. What's to stop Apple from molesting the permissions there as well? Some folks have suggested that Apple doesn't care about /usr/local at all anyway since it doesn't exist by default. If that's true (I don't remember if it was there when I installed), then there should be no reason for the SL upgrade to muck about with those perms...but, it obviously is.

I'd say tell Apple to quit with their totalitarian tendencies and leave it alone, but I suspect that wouldn't work.

Leland

Correct my oversimplistic view, but isn't it normal to install Audacity in /Applications like this...
What's preventing the two files from living in Plug-ins or one of the other folders?

I'm typing on a Leopard machine, and everything worked perfectly. On this machine, I'm an Administrator, but the powerful video production Snow Leopard machines, I'm a "Standard User."

I need to check again when I get time on the machines, but I swear Audacity allowed me to install it, and it's just the two packages that got lost. I don't remember...but I can check.

Koz

I have a new install of Snow Leopard on my home machine. Literally fresh from the Apple license CD to an empty drive -- not an upgrade.

jimmy 20110320
1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo
2GB Memory
Snow Leopard OS-X 10.6.6

It's literally hours old. I played Lowly User and downloaded 1.3.12 Audacity, Lame, and FFMpeg from...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

I just clicked where it said to click and used all the defaults. Audacity made it and Lame, did, too. But FFMpeg... Koz

I assume you got "required to proceed" when you tried to export to an FFmpeg format. That is expected because unlike LAME, FFmpeg is not detected automatically in 1.3.12 without loading it in the Import / Export Preferences. If you click "Locate" in those Preferences and the gods are smiling on you, you should see a "Success" message.

But as I keep trying to explain, Leland's made lots of changes to FFmpeg recently. Please do all your tests on the latest Nightly Build. FFmpeg should now be automatically detected if you install it, then launch Audacity, then export to an M4A format. So you should not see "required to proceed" providing there are no permissions problems. Leland is also rewriting detection so that it should (like LAME) be detected even if you install FFmpeg while Audacity is open.

You may have a hard time persuading Leland to have the LAME/FFmpeg installers place the libs in other than /usr/local/lib/audacity. However there will be a zip for the next version of FFmpeg-for-Audacity, so users can then put the libs where they like.



Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:You may have a hard time persuading Leland to have the LAME/FFmpeg installers place the libs in other than /usr/local/lib/audacity. However there will be a zip for the next version of FFmpeg-for-Audacity, so users can then put the libs where they like.

So, just how pervasive is this permissions problem? Maybe we should just go ahead and change to install in /Library/Application Support/audacity.

Leland

Leland wrote:So, just how pervasive is this permissions problem? Maybe we should just go ahead and change to install in /Library/Application Support/audacity.
Leland

As pervasive as OS X 10.6.x which is the main source of the problem. Probably about 25 reports a month, casting around the ones I get directly, the ones to [email protected] and the Forum and -users list. but including vague reports which could equally be the "competing libraries" problem. So numbers should go down for that reason in 1.3.13.

You mentioned an "/opt" folder before, maybe that would be less prone to interference than /Library/Application Support/audacity ?


Gale