I've configured our iMac to use Standard (ie. restricted) user accounts for my kids. Every now and then one will complain because Minecraft presents the attached Minecraft Launcher warning, "Unable to start Minecraft, if you are running from a dmg, please drag to Applications and try again".
And NO! It's not a technical issue! It's a **PERMISSIONS** assumption made by the installer and not catering for multi-user environments.
I realised a long time ago, around version Minecraft 1.7 that the only way I could enable all my boys to play Minecraft in their own user account was to ensure that every file in the /Applications/Minecraft.app folder had full read/write permissions; in Octal: 0777 (directories) 0666 for normal files. That's an absolute NO NO! However, I tolerated it in favour of having to elevate their permissions and to avoid having to reinstall the game every time a different child wanted to play.
I recently installed the updated launcher for Minecraft 1.13/14, BUT it appears there was yet another update to the launcher today. And trawling the folder tree under /Applications/Minecraft.app I see some permissions have been changed back to rwr--r-- (0644) or rwxr-xr-x (0744). Consequently, my two other sons are not able to play the game until I manually change the permissions again...that is until another update screws it up again.
The attached (redacted) log file records how the application itself is trying to write to the Minecraft.app folder, but fails due to lack of permissions. The most relevant line being:
[Error: 2019-07-24 20:56:58.620398: mainOSX.cpp.mm(75)] main executable is not writable: /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher
Similarly, the long listing shows how in our case USER1 had all the permissions mentioned above, but since the update USER_2_ has overwritten those changes, and reset the permissions. I may try ACLs, but have avoided those.
I think all these issues stem from the assumption players have elevated privileges on the machine (a no, no in today's day and age with malware, etc.), and that the machine functions in single user mode, again incorrect given the approach to separating user accounts with Cloud identities, etc.
I have only experienced this on an Apple system so can't say if the behaviour is similar on Linux.
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Most recent launcher is now version 545.
And the permissions were screwed up again by the first user to update the launcher. I had to manually change them again to enable the other user accounts to start the launcher.
Anybody experiencing the same issue under limited accounts, give all users full access to the app folder in a terminal window with:
$ sudo chmod -R a+w /Applications/Minecraft.app
Run this in an administrative context. It's likely the issue will re-occur with future updates to the launcher.
Also running into the issue. I'm running a class that's using Minecraft to teach programming at a public school. The school has configured accounts for the students to log into on their computers, and this bug seems to be preventing us from launching minecraft.
Latest launcher version 598.
Permissions had to be changed with the chmod command again. Report was/is applicable to unreleased versions.
Interestingly, once the permissions were changed and the launcher loaded, my second son was offered the option of using the existing account (his younger brother's), or to add another account. Hmm! Surely, this other account shouldn't even be visible let alone offered as an option! Particularly, since it's an entirely separate USER PROFILE.
Once he logged in with his credentials, the credentials for his brother's account did disappear. In the school context mentioned by Baker, this might be of some concern.
The only way I got around this was to move the dmg file to a flash drive and install a copy of Minecraft for each log in. An inefficient use of space and you need to know which copy will work for each log in (you will see each one but only the one installed while logged as that user will launch properly).
Try running "chmod a+rwx /Applications/Minecraft.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher" without the quotes in your Terminal on the account that it works.
"chmod a+rwx ..." is NOT a solution – making the files world-writable is already described in the issue, and doing so is not acceptable for security reasons (it also breaks after a while.)
An easy solution would be if Minecraft simply started up without trying to update unless it had sufficient permissions to do so.
Same as @unknown said, just log into each account, install the launcher, and rename it something unique like Minecraft-accountname. Then it works.
Thank you for your report!
We're tracking this issue in MCL-4011, so this ticket is being resolved and linked as a duplicate.
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