MacOS – Changing XAMPP directory/file permissions

macospermission

On my old Windows setup I used a symbolic link to store my htdocs folder in my Skydrive folder and still work with XAMPP. I've just bought a MacBook and trying to accomplish the same thing but seem to be having trouble. I have created an alias of the htdocs folder in Skydrive and placed it in the XAMPP directory but I'm having file permission problems in the form of…

Access forbidden!

You don't have permission to access the requested directory. There is either no index document or the directory is read-protected.

If I understand correctly, instead of just changing the Skydrive folder permissions I also need to change the parent directories so "/Users/Adam/Documents/Skydrive/xampp/htdocs" needs to have read and write permissions for "everyone". When I change to that everything works as it should but I'm wondering if there's a better/safer way of doing it?

I don't really understand the file permissions, is that "everyone" just other users on the computer, nothing network related? If so everything should be fine as I'm the only user on the laptop.

Best Answer

Instead of using an 'alias' at the Finder level, you might want to use the terminal to create a 'symlink'. The command to do this is ln so you can learn more with man ln - but you can also check out these two articles that explain the concept a little clearer than the man page.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2001110610290643

http://gigaom.com/2011/04/27/how-to-create-and-use-symlinks-on-a-mac/

To answer your other question, yes, everyone means EVERYONE, in addition to every user on the laptop.