GarageBand 1.1

By: Scott Doenges - Revised: 2006-05-31 devin

GarageBand 1.1 requires world-write access to the Loops and Instruments files and folders stored in /Library/Application Support/GarageBand (approx. 1.8 GB of data). We see this as a security problem on our Macs since it means one user could log in and delete or modify these files, which would break GarageBand for the next user who logs in.
Ideally, files and folders that require write access should not be kept in /Library, especially in an educational lab environment. If an application needs to modify files in order to function, they should be kept in ~/Library — however it's not feasible to store 1.8 GB of data in every user's home folder. It would be nice if GarageBand could write changes to a cache when a user modifies loops/instruments, instead of writing to the actual original loop/instrument files.
Workaround: To solve this problem in our student computer labs, I did the following: create a read-only disk image of the /Library/Application Support/GarageBand folder, and use an AppleScript to mount this image as read-write using 'hdid -shadow', then create a symbolic link in /Library/Application Support/GarageBand that points to /Volumes/GarageBand, then have the AppleScript launch the actual GarageBand application.
GarageBand 2.x does not have this problem.