Re: What should be the permissions on a font?

TaliesinSoft wrote:

I have a number of fonts located in

     /library/fonts

and would like to know what the permissions, owner, group, and others should be set to. These fonts will be accessed by six different accounts, one administrator and five user.

I've noted that the fonts in /system/library/fonts have their permissions set to

     owner     system     read/write

     group     wheel     read/write

     others     read only

Now if only I knew who in the dickens "wheel" is!


1) Wheel is a root related group associated with system operations. Apple keeps changing its application in subtle ways from release to relase. suffice it to say, it is for there root level use only.

2) The permissions for the fonts in these two directories are supposed to be different: the /Library/Fonts directory would typically be:
Owner - root - read/write
Group - Admin - read/write
others - - read
It was intended that administrators can maintain fonts in the /Library/Fonts directory and NOT the ones in the /System/Library/Fonts directory--hence the permissions and groups used.

3) In general, if you run the fix permissions function in disk utility, it will correct all the fonts installed with the OS. Those that you've installed ad hoc can be changed to match the OS installed fonts for consistency.

4) Your Owner of "System" in the /System/Library/Fonts folder would normally be "root" in 10.3.* but Apple may have changed it in Tiger (not sure what you are using). Furthermore, the group access for the /system/Library/Fonts folder contents would normally be read only in some 10.3.* releases. Apple keeps changing their permissions phylosophies from release to release so nobody's installation matches anyone elses it would seem. E.g., the use of the "wheel" group appears to have evolved some over the last year or so.


--
Jeff Wiseman
to reply, just remove ALLTHESPAM
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