Unreal Engine on OSX _NEEDS_ root privileges?

General Feedback & Requests
1

Hello,

First of all, I’m not sure if this is the correct place for posting this kind of thing, but I have been having a problem on my machine (Mac) with Unreal. Second, the problem(s): when I start Unreal, It says: Error! Invalid Installer. The copy of Unreal I have is downloaded straight from the official site itself (binary). There are two options: Retry and OK. Pressing OK seems to do nothing and just launch the launcher anyway and pressing retry just checks for updates of something and then the error appears again.

The other problem (and main issue) is when the launcher successfully logs in and I try to install the latest engine (or any engine for that matter). It says:

Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 12.44.50 PM.jpg
Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 12.44.50 PM.jpg2055×1130 89.3 KB

Every time I try to install the engine. Using Unreal as root seems to work around this problem, but then Xcode complains about unsigned builds and other problematic things that happen when using Xcode as root. FYI I have to use Xcode as root because the projects are then made as root and as a user you cannot access them unless you have root permissions.

Does anyone know how to fix this issue?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: This is what the initial start screen looks like:
Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 1.48.20 PM.png

2

hi, I moved this to the feedback section as you will probably get better help quicker:)

3

Thanks for the information. I assume that, if I had any problem/bug I need help with with the engine, I should post it here?

4

yes usually this is the best place on the forum to get help with engine issues or bugs or for just general feedback about UE4. there is also the UE4 answerhub (link at the top of the page) where you can post about engine issues/bugs where you will have an epic employee assigned to your problem to help you(they help here as well) with your bug/issue, however the answerhub gets lots of posts so it can take longer to get the help, my advice would be to post here and on the answerhub and put a link to your answerhub post in your post here on the forum.

5

Hi pepi55,

If you could, please post this on the answerhub at http://answersunrealengine.com so we can better assist you. It is easier for us to be able to help when errors such as this are posted in the bug reports section, which we prioritize when assisting users. Thank you!

6

I have found the problem.

The issue here was that the Epic Games Launcher installs the engine in /Users/Share/. For some reason it creates the /Users/Share/Unrealengine folder under the current user (i.e. if I am user A and install the engine as user A, the /User/Share/Unrealengine’s owner is A and user B needs root privileges to do anything in the /Users/Share/Unrealengine folder). The problem can be solved by chowning the folder or deleting it and installing the engine as user B.

I suggest the issue be fixed by making a local Unrealengine folder in which each user installs his/her own copy of the engine. I can’t think of any other possible solution right now.

P.S.: Explanation is like for a 5-year-old is for future reference.

EDIT: This solved both the invalid installer AND the initialization failed errors.