Permissions Fun


Recommended Posts

So I have a Mac Mini setup as file server. There are two of us (at the moment) and we have it setup as a development server for websites. We can both access everything fine, but if one of us edits a file and saves it then the other cannot even open it. We can resolve this by manually re-applying the proper permissions, but this is going to be a pain to do every time. Is there an easy solution to this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not really a Mac user so I can't comment on fixing the permissions issue, but you may want to look into using a file versioning system like Subversion. Basically the way it works is you have a copy of the files on the server (called a "repository") and then you each have a copy of those files on your own computers (called a "checkout" of the "repository"). Then you each edit files on your own computers and then upload ("commit") those changes to the server. If you both edit a file at the same time, Subversion will merge the two new files together and provide for a process to resolve any conflicts that may occur (i.e. the same line in a single file was changed by both of you). The system also keeps old copies of the files around for retrieval should you make erroneous changes or accidentally delete files.

Check out the Subversion website: http://subversion.tigris.org/

You'll see the server application (called Subversion) and several client applications you use to interact with the server (such as the SCPlugin for OS X).

It's a bit more complex, but depending on how active the two of you are doing web development, it might well be worth the extra setup involved.

Here's what looks to be a pretty good tutorial on getting things setup in the OS X environment: http://www.rubyrobot.org/tutorial/subversion-with-mac-os-x

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for your post. I have used Subversion in the past, and we'll be setting something up. I was hoping for an easy solution at the moment until I have time to play with a subversion server. The one thing I'm trying to avoid is using our own computers for development. I'd like to develop off the server so we can avoid discrepancies between our own personal computers as they would have to house their own server as we develop with PHP/MySQL etc. I guess I may not be able to do it that way and we'll be forced to use our own computers with an SVN repository.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A dropbox could be a solution for a different scenario, but it wouldn't work for ours. Nor would a superuser situation, as we're going to be adding more people to our team and I'd rather not everyone have access to do whatever they want on the server. I'm thinking we'll have to set it up as an SVN server and have everyone develop off of their own machines with their own localized server on their machine. Not really what I want as I can easily foresee technical issues, but I guess there is no other option....

edit: The biggest issue seems to be from the simple fact that when one of us writes to a file the groups permission gets overwritten/removed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.