I completely misunderstood then.
Strange issue indeed. It it were your computer I'd suggest using dtruss to intercept the system calls opening reaper.ini, to see where it's looking for it and what goes wrong.
Portable install:
Code:
$ sudo dtruss -f sudo -u $USER '/Volumes/Data\ Drive/portable_reaper/REAPER64.app/Contents/MacOS/REAPER' 2>&1 | grep reaper.ini
stat64("/Volumes/Data Drive/portable_reaper/reaper.ini\0", 0x7FFF5E836C00, 0xA3900) = 0 0
open_nocancel("/Volumes/Data Drive/portable_reaper/reaper.ini\0", 0x0, 0x1B6) = 14 0
Normal install (portable reaper.ini not found):
Code:
stat64("/Volumes/Data Drive/portable_reaper/reaper.ini\0", 0x7FFF5A9DDBE0, 0xA3500) = -1 Err#2
open_nocancel("/Users/cfillion/Library/Application Support/REAPER/reaper.ini\0", 0x209, 0x1B6) = 14 0
Portable reaper.ini unreadable and unwritable (+ whole directory unwritable) doesn't cause it to fallback to the standard install either (it just loads with defaults and fails to save any settings):
Code:
stat64("/Volumes/Data Drive/portable_reaper/reaper.ini\0", 0x7FFF51D8DCA0, 0x10AF00) = 0 0
open_nocancel("/Volumes/Data Drive/portable_reaper/reaper.ini\0", 0x0, 0x1B6) = -1 Err#13