NeoOffice 3.0.1 and Mac OSX Parental controls issue

[Lorinda]

My daughter has an managed account on my computer. Today I tried to give her permission to use NeoOffice 3.0.1 EA in her account, so she can work with ppt files from school. But when I tried to add it to the list of permitted apps, i was told that NeoOffice "does not work with the limites you have selected."

I do have Neo 3.0 on my computer, rennamed as NeoOffice 3.0, and she does have permission to use it.

Here's how to reproduce it in Tiger:

-Go to Apple's System Preferences and choose Accounts
-If necessary, create a managed account (let me know if you need step by steps for that part)
-In the managed account, click on the Parental Controls tab
-Click on the Configure... button to the right of Finder&System
-Click in the "Some Limits" Radio Button
-Allow all six of the actions with checkboxes just under "Username Can", or check all but "Administer Printers" and "Change Password" (my original settings were for only the other four, but I tried with all 6 o.k.'d)
-Click the disclosure triangle next to Applications, and look for NeoOffice. It is not on the list in my set-up (although NeoOffice 3.0 is)
-Click on the "Locate...." button
-Navigate to NeoOffice, select it, an click "Add"
-The error message will occur.

Note that I get the same error with NeoOffice-225 (I renamed NeoOffice 2.2.5 to keep it for testing purposes.)

I tried unchecking NeoOffice 3.0, which she does have permission to use, and then choosing one of the others, but I got the same error. I also tried giving my son--who has never been authorized to use any version of Neo--permission to use NeoOffice and I got the same error.

Lorinda

[pluby]

Sounds to me like you took away write permissions from their ~/Library/Preferences folder. NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org absolutely needs to have write permissions to that folder as that is where user preference files are managed.

Patrick

[pluby]

Ignore my last post, Fran and I were able to reproduce what you are seeing and I believe that it is a Mac OS X bug as it also occurs with the various other applications for which I have multiple versions.

While we have no access to the Mac OS X code, it appears that Mac OS X is only showing one application when multiple applications share the same application signature.

Patrick

[pluby]

More news: this is definitely a Mac OS X bug (or feature?).

I copied Apple's TextEdit application from my Panther installation to my /Applications folder as TextEdit2.app, confirmed that it runs, and then tried to set the Parental Controls using your steps.

Only one of the two TextEdit applications appears in the list of allowed applications and when I press the Locate button and select the unallowed version of TextEdit, I get the same error that you get.

Patrick

[Lorinda]

Patrick:

Thanks for the explanation. In the meantime, I have discovered that while I System Preferences says Jennifer is authorized to use NeoOffice 3.0, when I double click on a ppt file in her account, NeoOffice (i.e. NeoOffice 3.0.1 EA) opens. I also tried opening Neo from her dock, and that worked properly, and opened 3.0.1

I then checked my son's account (who is not authorized for any version of Neo) and tried running Neo. I got the usual warning that he was not authorized to run it.

When I originally gave my daughter permission to use Neo, the 3.0 version was the most current and was named simply NeoOffice. Then when I downloaded 3.01.EA, I renamed the 3.0 app NeoOffice 3.0. So OS X tracked that I had changed the name to NeoOffice 3.0, but the permission is actually for NeoOffice, that is whatever version I have named NeoOffice.

Thanks for solving the mystery.