Using Chubby Bunny 4.0.1. Quit, logout, login as another user, Classic.app opens ?+blank.

Classic.app is in the Applications folder, with standard setup in /Users/Shared and 1200Meg.dmg . Checked unix permissions for all users and folders, also replicated the .sheep* files in each user's home folder, still the same result when changing logins. How do we accommodate MacOS X user logins, assuming all COI unix paths remain the same for all users? (I'm aware of the "hid" file inside the package, have made no path changes there.)

Machine is a Mac mini, running Mavericks. Chubby is excellent; I would like to enable it for a second user, and a related goal is to copy the entire installation to another Mac, with all paths and users the same -- I suppose this is closely related to the user-add/change question.

Chubby Bunny is not designed to be used by more than one user. You will need to change permissions to at least the startup image file and possibly more files.


Apparently SheepShaver cannot find or access the startup volume. In your setup the startup volume will be:
/Applications/Classic.app/COI.app/.Classic.dmg
Note that the "dot file" .Classic.dmg will be hidden.
Did you make sure that everyone has read/write permissions to that file? Normally, only the user who expanded or copied the Classic.app package will have access.


No need to do that. An existing ~/.sheepshaver_prefs file will be overwritten each time Classic.app is launched and SheepShaver will create a fresh ~/.sheepshaver_nvram file when it does not exist.

Thanks very much. I forgot about this, since both users are unix admins. Looking at ls -alR Classic.app, I saw that a few chmod g+w changes were needed, and all is well now.

I appreciate the work that has been done to create Chubby Bunny. I have old classic Macs and all their licensed software, etc., so I could install Sheepshaver directly, but the Chubby Bunny package certainly saves a lot of time which can then be devoted to moving old os9 apps over. I have done this, and I can report that the abandoned Canvas 7 appears to work, also Claris Resolve and HS Tools/Wingz. So I can access some of my old data files on a new Mac at last.

CPU load -- this is purely a Sheepshaver phenomenon, I suppose: Classic.app running, with no internal activity, takes about 50 percent of total CPU resources steadily, seen from Activity Monitor lists/graphs (Mac mini 2010, dual core 2.66Ghz).

You might find it even easier to work with an alternative to Chubby Bunny. Search Google for

"Mac OS 9 for OS X"

No setup required. It prints to OS X/macOS printers or creates a PDF in OS X/macOS. Also, you can drop a file on the application icon to copy it to the SheepShaver desktop. (And it doesn't have a silly name.)

Well, ignore what I wrote in the previous message. It turns out that this system doesn't work in multi-user environments. I'll fix it so it does and will report back.

Re: Mac OS 9.app -- thanks for the suggestion, I tested it -- nice, a very slick package. I did discover that a few chmods, etc., did not seem to yield multiuser success. But I appreciate your response and look forward to further developments.

OK, this now works in a multi-user system. The first time anyone uses it, they'll need to enter their password to enable some permissions. (You can open the AppleScript to see exactly what's happening.) You won't be asked again until you run the app after another user has used it. That's not very efficient, but good enough for now.

Someday, I'll rewrite this to use the user's Library/Application Support folder for configuration files, etc., but that will take a bit of work. Meanwhile, this gets the job done.

I just tested it - works as you described - many thanks!

And now I've figured out to make it work without the password, but I won't post it until I've added one more feature: I want it to test whether another user has already started the program, so that two users won't try to access the same hard disk image. I haven't figured out the method yet, but it should be possible.

Done. The current version doesn't need anyone's password, and and won't let you launch it if another user has started up SheepShaver and it's still open. I got quite an education in AppleScript and unix out of this.

The one thing I haven't solved is purely aesthetic. When the user who installs this app runs it, SheepShaver shows the correct icon in the dock. When a different user runs, SheepShaver displays a generic icon in the dock. This is easily fixed by finding the SheepShaver icon in the Contents/Resources/Files folder, opening it in Preview, copying it to the clipboard, then pressing Cmd-I on the SheepShaver app in the same folder, and pasting the icon into the generic icon at the top of the Get Info window. But I haven't yet found out how to automate that process.

Password-free version OK as described, but a problem when option-opening to change unix folder path. The app error window text was as follows:

Can’t make file “Doug3:Users:[myusernamehere]:Library:Application Support:MacOS9:MacOS.sheepvmextfspath” into type file.

Same thing with fresh replacement copy of Mac OS 9.app.

Before the tests I did start clean (I think) by removing .MacOS9Transfer in Documents, and the things in Library:Application Support, Library:Preferences, and previous alternate unix folder.

Possible bug or have I missed a deletion somewhere else? Temporarily I reverted to the previous password-enabled version. Good to go, no problem, your marathon work much appreciated.

Certainly a bug. somehow a path string and the name of a variable (extfspath) got lumped together. Will try to fix sometime this week. Thanks for reporting this, and obviously I should have found it in my own tests but didn't.

That problem is too complicated to fix, so the current download is now the password-prompting version that you tried out. As Ronald said in another thread, it probably doesn't make much sense to use this kind of system in a way that multiple users can access it. It makes more sense if each user has a copy in his or her own folder. But if this version works, that's better than nothing.

Let's continue this in a more suitable thread:

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=9358