How to correctly install on OS X

[Garsun]

I would like to install Fantasy Grounds Unity on my Mac computer (MacOS Sonoma version 14.1.2)
The computer has one admin account and several standard accounts for users.
I have tried several ways of installing but Fantasy Grounds will only function fully in the admin account and not the standard accounts.
For security reasons this is unacceptable.
If someone could tell me what I’m doing wrong and how to correctly install I would greatly appreciate it .

[LordEntrails]

I assume you are not installing via Steam? Did you see these instructions? Installing on Mac OSX - Fantasy Grounds Customer Portal - Confluence (atlassian.net) (https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/996639724/Installing+on+Mac+OSX)

Hopefully a Mac person can give you more info soon.

[Garsun]

Hopefully a Mac person can give you more info soon.

thanks for the quick reply.
I’ll keep an eye out here for more information.
Tomorrow I’ll try wiping the whole system and load a fresh OS and fantasy ground to make sure it’s not something stupid I’m doing or it not something historic in my OS that’s broken.

[Zacchaeus]

Looking at the mac installation instructions it seems like the install would be available to all users and so I assume that means it will only install in the admin account (if I am understanding that that is the same as in windows - however I don't know macs and have never set up any kind of account on windows either - so I'm guessing).

[pindercarl]

I would like to install Fantasy Grounds Unity on my Mac computer (MacOS Sonoma version 14.1.2)
The computer has one admin account and several standard accounts for users.
I have tried several ways of installing but Fantasy Grounds will only function fully in the admin account and not the standard accounts.
For security reasons this is unacceptable.
If someone could tell me what I’m doing wrong and how to correctly install I would greatly appreciate it .

Could you clarify "I have tried several ways of installing but Fantasy Grounds will only function fully in the admin account and not the standard accounts." Does this mean that you can run Fantasy Grounds on the standard accounts, but some functions do not work? Or, can you not run Fantasy Grounds on the standard accounts at all?

[Garsun]

Could you clarify "I have tried several ways of installing but Fantasy Grounds will only function fully in the admin account and not the standard accounts." Does this mean that you can run Fantasy Grounds on the standard accounts, but some functions do not work? Or, can you not run Fantasy Grounds on the standard accounts at all?

Here’s what I have determined by wiping my computer and installing a fresh copy of OS X 14.4.1.
These results are with a virgin system with no additional software loaded.

I created a admin account and used it to update to the most recent iOS release.
Then added a standard user account for user A.
Follow the instructions from the previous post. I then installed Fantasy Grounds and completed the set up procedure with my Fantasy Grounds user account and key.
The Fantasy Grounds installer did cause a system wide crash once while updating that I did not notice because I was getting dinner.
When returning to a sign on screen I re-logged in and launched Fantasy Grounds where it said it needed an update.
This update completed successfully and Fantasy Grounds appears to be running completely and normally in the user A account.
The app directory is “/applications/SmiteWorks/Fantasy Grounds
The data directory is “/user/UserA/SmiteWorks/Fantasy Grounds

Technically, this is all I need but because of the name of the post I investigated further.

I then created a standard account user B.
Signing out of user A I logged into user B.
When launching Fantasy grounds there was no content available to use. This makes sense since the logged in user and key and purchase content is all sitting over in user A's directory structure and therefore cannot be accessed from user B.
I a attempted Fantasy Grounds update from user B where the updater requested to "attempting to fix permissions".
Nothing appears to happens when "attempting to fix permissions" and there does not appear to be a way to use Fantasy Grounds from user B.

I can see two different but both valuable ways to fix this issue.

1: make the Fantasy Grounds account and key completely separate for user A and a different one for user B. I am probably one of a few with two separate Fantasy Grounds licenses where this option would be appealing.

2: make the data directory common between all users. This would allow a family to all be able to use the single Fantasy Grounds license for everybody in their separate accounts. Yeah, I’m not sure how many Fantasy Grounds users would find this useful and it’s probably not worth the trouble.

I am pretty sure issues that prompted this post developed because when I loaded fantasy grounds two years ago, I loaded it from the admin account thinking that it would be shared by all users. Though I did not prove that this is still a problem this time around I suspect that’s what caused my issues.

I hope this shed some light for anyone who may have issues loading Fantasy Grounds on an OS X system.
If anybody smarter than I has input, will keep an eye on this thread.

[snupy]

I use mac. I installed a few months ago, so details are not fresh. Also I installed it and use it from an admin account.

I left the application in the Applications folder, but moved the data folder to Dropbox. When you launch FG if you hit settings and then advanced you can specify the address path for both the main app and the data folder. I changed the data folder one to point to the appropriate folder in dropbox and everything works fine. Presumably this setup would work with multiple users and non-administrator ones as well - provided they all have read and write access to the data folder, or it may start asking for administrators passwords. However I have never tested that.

In general you can launch an app with administrator privileges from terminal using sudo.

[Zacchaeus]

I use mac. I installed a few months ago, so details are not fresh. Also I installed it and use it from an admin account.

I left the application in the Applications folder, but moved the data folder to Dropbox. When you launch FG if you hit settings and then advanced you can specify the address path for both the main app and the data folder. I changed the data folder one to point to the appropriate folder in dropbox and everything works fine. Presumably this setup would work with multiple users and non-administrator ones as well - provided they all have read and write access to the data folder, or it may start asking for administrators passwords. However I have never tested that.

In general you can launch an app with administrator privileges from terminal using sudo.

It is highly recommended that you do not store your data files in a cloud based storage. It's fine to have that as a back up - provided that you switch off auto syncing of data. You data folders should be on your local disc; there have been multiple reports in the past where users have lost data because of issues with syncing their data folders to the cloud.

[snupy]

Indeed. But with Dropbox for each file you can specify if you want a local offline copy to be kept or not. For the FG folder I do keep the local offline copy and the cloud essentially acts as a backup.

Aside from that, the process I describe should work with any other folder one may want to use.

EDIT: I assume that when you specify to keep the file local in Dropbox, the local file acts as a master repository of sort, and its most recent status is what is synced to the cloud. I keep it to auto sync and haven't had problems (with this or other software/files) so far, but I do not know what the inner working of Dropbox really is, so do follow Zaccheus advice if you prefer to be extra safe.

[Garsun]

I use mac. I installed a few months ago, so details are not fresh. Also I installed it and use it from an admin account.

I left the application in the Applications folder, but moved the data folder to Dropbox. When you launch FG if you hit settings and then advanced you can specify the address path for both the main app and the data folder. I changed the data folder one to point to the appropriate folder in dropbox and everything works fine. Presumably this setup would work with multiple users and non-administrator ones as well - provided they all have read and write access to the data folder, or it may start asking for administrators passwords. However I have never tested that.

I would be curious if you could confirm that this would work with a standard user as well as the admin user.
If it’s not too much trouble, it’s easy to create a throwaway standard user account to sign into and test. Although I don’t know how hard it would be setting up the dropbox in this standard users account… might make it more trouble than worth.
I am security conscious and never use the admin account for any real work. it’s just there for admin stuff. All my email and everything else is assigned to the standard account where I do my work. Which is probably where the problems started since I suspect most people just have the one account as admin and use it for everything. Yes, I’ve been, probably correctly, called paranoid.:)

[snupy]

I would be curious if you could confirm that this would work with a standard user as well as the admin user.
If it’s not too much trouble, it’s easy to create a throwaway standard user account to sign into and test. Although I don’t know how hard it would be setting up the dropbox in this standard users account… might make it more trouble than worth.
I am security conscious and never use the admin account for any real work. it’s just there for admin stuff. All my email and everything else is assigned to the standard account where I do my work. Which is probably where the problems started since I suspect most people just have the one account as admin and use it for everything. Yes, I’ve been, probably correctly, called paranoid.:)

I gave it a quick try but indeed this is a bit annoying to setup as I would have to change quite a few folder permissions to access the dropbox FG folder from the other account and I'd prefer not to do that. I believe it would work but can't be sure without trying, sorry.

[Trenloe]

Indeed. But with Dropbox for each file you can specify if you want a local offline copy to be kept or not. For the FG folder I do keep the local offline copy and the cloud essentially acts as a backup.

Aside from that, the process I describe should work with any other folder one may want to use.

EDIT: I assume that when you specify to keep the file local in Dropbox, the local file acts as a master repository of sort, and its most recent status is what is synced to the cloud. I keep it to auto sync and haven't had problems (with this or other software/files) so far, but I do not know what the inner working of Dropbox really is, so do follow Zaccheus advice if you prefer to be extra safe.
That's not how local ("offline") files in DropBox works. This is purely a setting to save disk spcace locally by offering an option to have a small file "stub" locally (classed as "online" storage only) or have the full file locally ("offline"). It doesn't impact how DropBox processes files that change frequently - the live FG campaign files change freqently, and so there's a chance of the files getting corrupted (and this has been reported many times on these forums over the years). As has been mentioned, the strong recommendation is not to have any file backup/sync/cloud storage active on the live FG data files - as you risk corrupting those files and losing campaign data.

[Nylanfs]

There's a automated backup process in my sig for PC's, no idea if that would help for Mac's