Skip to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

The AVSIM Community

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.

P4AO scenery.cfg locked, lack of permissions

Featured Replies

Hi,

not sure if this is a bug or due to my personal config - or I didn't read the manual carefully enough:
After I have started P4AO once, I cannot activate or deactivate a scenery (listed in scenery.cfg) in P3D Scenery Libray anymore

This is because P3AO makes a backup of the scenery.cfg (amongst other files) in %programdata%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\ 
After the backup, the windows security settings of that file have been changed. The group "authenticated users" having full access has been removed.

Surprisingly, this particular permission is not inherited but given to each file in the folder individually, probably by the initial P3D setup.
I fixed this quickly by adding this permission with inheritance to the whole folder Prepar3D v4, but I thought it's worth to mention here because P3D doesn't throw any error message, it just doesn't save your changes... 
 

  • Commercial Member

Hi,

can't say that I have heard of this before.

14 minutes ago, Cubitus said:

This is because P3AO makes a backup of the scenery.cfg (amongst other files) in %programdata%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\ 
After the backup, the windows security settings of that file have been changed. The group "authenticated users" having full access has been removed.

No. What it does is, it renames the original scenery.cfg (or any other file that has been altered) to *.P4AOBAK and creates a new one instead. So file security and ownership would depend on the user account that you are running P4AO with. The very first time a file is touched, a second backup is created too, named *.orig. That way the original state of a file is always kept intact.

Best regards

LORBY-SI

  • Author

You are right, it creates a new one. Of course, by creating a new file, the permissons of the new file are not copied from the *.P4AOBAK file but from the permissions of the parent folder (inheritance assumed). In my case, the parent folder grants write access to admins only. This caused my issue. As expected, the group was present in scenery.P4AOBAK. It was just missing in scenery.cfg

Anyway, as nobody else encountered this issue, it indeed seems to be a very personal problem.

By the way, although I generally dislike any kind of helper programs (because they never exactly do what I want them to do), your tool is perfect for my needs. Thanks a lot for that!

 

  • Commercial Member

Hi, 

I can try to salvage the original access control parameters. Not sure that this will work in all cases though. Care to test this on your system?

<obsolete>

Please run the P4AO Backup function first...

Best regards

 

Edited by Lorby_SI

LORBY-SI

8 hours ago, Cubitus said:

By the way, although I generally dislike any kind of helper programs (because they never exactly do what I want them to do), your tool is perfect for my needs. Thanks a lot for that!

 

P4AO is one of those rare utilities that is almost a necessity, if you're installing, moving, ordering and grouping the scenery library...it is especially important since LM hasn't enforced xml for addons, and continues to use, and allow use of scenery.cfg.

Oliver has constantly updated P4AO, and it has become a magic toolbox for scenery management.

Kind Regards,

Steven_Miller.png?dl=1

i7-6700k Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5 32GB DDR4 2666 EVGA FTW ULTRA RTX3080 12GB

  • Author

Hi,
sorry but that didn't make any difference. I've restored the original files by removing the P4AOBAK extension, then deinstalled beta_03 and installed beta_07. Pressed on save without running the backup function first (standard user behaviour... sorry...) 
Screenshots of the resulting access rights can be found here: https://fdrnet.de/neverdelete/P4ao_access.pdf

 

 

  • Commercial Member
3 hours ago, Cubitus said:

Hi,
sorry but that didn't make any difference. I've restored the original files by removing the P4AOBAK extension, then deinstalled beta_03 and installed beta_07. Pressed on save without running the backup function first (standard user behaviour... sorry...) 
Screenshots of the resulting access rights can be found here: https://fdrnet.de/neverdelete/P4ao_access.pdf

 

 

My problem is that I can't test it. None of my devel computers has the "Authenticated user" anywhere, they are all stand alone - no domain controller. So any solution is really hit-or-miss.

Until now, I never received any complains about this either.

I suggest that you send me an email, address is on the last page of the P4AO manual. File Security is dangerous business, and I'd rather not put the public version of P4AO at risk like that. But I can try different things that might solve your specific problem offline. German is fine too btw.

Best regards

Edited by Lorby_SI

LORBY-SI

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.