Pro Tools 6

By: Scott Doenges - Revised: 2006-06-02 devin

Pro Tools Iconhttp://www.digidesign.com/
  • Will not even launch unless the current user is designated as an Admin!
  • Digidesign is aware of this, claiming in their knowledgebase that ProTools needs to "create and delete huge files." I'm assuming that it writes incoming/outgoing audio data to a cache somewhere, but why not make it write to /tmp/ or something?. Hopefully they'll wise up in a future release.
  • Fixed? — A beta came out in Feb for 6.2.3b1 that was expressly for people who needed to allow non-admin users to run the application. The Pro Tools 6.4, doesn't clearly document that this was specifically included from the beta, but with a few quick tests it appears that does run properly with non-admin accounts.
  • Now, if they could update their documentation to clearly state that it works with non-admin accounts...
  • The ReadMe still said on page 1: "To ensure proper operation and file management, Pro Tools LE 6.4 software must be installed in an administrator-level account in Mac OS X. In addition, to ensure access to all plug-ins from within Pro Tools, the Pro Tools application and all Pro Tools plug-ins should be installed and used from the same administrator-level account."
  • Yet on Page 3, it talks about making sure to configure non-admin accounts with No-Limits, so it was unclear whether they had incorporated the beta work or not- "Limitations to Non-Admin accounts for Pro Tools Users (Item #47080) When setting up non-admin accounts for Pro Tools, it is suggested that you set the Limits for the non-admin account to 'No Limits.'"
  • So, it seems to work properly with non-admins, but if someone finds issues, please let us know.
  • VocalLine DAE plugin in /Library/Application Support/Digidesign/Plug-ins/ needs to be world-writable (mode 777) to function, but is installed as mode 755. It would be best if the application continued to function with the VocalLine DAE plugin set to 755. (If there's any cache data being written to the plugin, it would be better if this was written to /tmp/.)
  • On first run, the directory /Applications/Digidesign/Pro Tools/I/O Settings/ is created world-writable, but doesn't need to be world-writable. If the application is run the first time as a non-admin user this directory will not be created as non-admin users normally don't have write access to anything in /Applications/, which requires that the first run be by an admin.
  • Another problem with the I/O Settings/ directory is the name. Some tools may mistake the forward slash as a directory separator -- i.e. the O Settings/ directory inside the I/ directory. If possible (depending on the tool) make sure you either put the path in quotes or escape the forward slash by putting a "" before the forward slash, and the space for that matter: I/O Settings.