[PD] Mac OS X and the -rt switch

Adam Lindsay atl at comp.lancs.ac.uk
Wed Jan 29 03:41:00 CET 2003


I believe Michael McGonagle said this around Tue, 28 Jan 2003:

>Does this just ignore the -rt switch? Or is it that because my user is 
>the main (and only) user, does it automatically get root access? I am 
>currently running my Mac with a "rootless" system (no password for 
>root), and all the times I have entered a password for root, I end up 
>entering my user password in its place. Do I need to "enable" my root 
>user (give it a password) and run PD as root to get the best realtime 
>performance?

Hi Mike,

If you request -rt and it fails, Pd complains.

>Or, is the -rt switch even implemented on Mac OS X?

I suspect Miller implemented it on the Mac to overcome some performance
issues.

Better unix hackers can explain why this is so, but the pd executable is
owned by root, and it has the 4000 bit set, "set-user-ID-on-execution."
(See 'man chmod' for more info.) That's what enables the -rt setting.

Although you can't log on as root from the login screen (i.e. root
doesn't have a password), the "root" user indeed is present on your
MacOSX system. No more mucking about needed there.

And my installers set the proper permissions to enable the -rt switch as
part of their postinstall script. So nothing needed there, either.

Cheers,
adam


--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
 Adam Lindsay                  +44(0)1524 594 537
 atl at comp.lancs.ac.uk
 http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/atl/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=





More information about the Pd-list mailing list