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Setup User Accounts (Tiger)

  • If your department doesn't have an LDAP server and you are configuring a desktop machine that will be always connected to an internal network, you should absolutely do the following. For laptops, these steps are optional. The instructions below match your Mac user ID to the unix user ID on your internal network so that if you cross-mount hard drives, all files will be created with the same user/group permissions.

    1. Make a new user account called "myadmin" for doing some temporary administration stuff by going to System Preferences -> Accounts
    2. Log in as "myadmin" on your Mac.
    3. Find your user/group information on the unix system. Log into a unix machine and type groups... use the first one. Also type "id" which should return an ID number for your user account and group account on the unix machines. Record these numbers for further steps.
    4. Open System Preferences->Accounts. Create a new user with the same username as on Unix.
    5. Open Applications->Utilities->Netinfo Manager. Be careful in this application because you can really hurt your system. I only recommend making these changes immediately after a clean install.

      Leopard Note: There is no more Netinfo Manager. Instead find these options under System Preferences->Accounts, right click on a user and go to Advanced Options.
    6. In Netinfo Manager, goto groups. Add a new group that matches the group you belong to on the unix system. Change the gid for that group to match the number recorded as gid from above.
    7. In Netinfo Manager, goto users. Edit your new user account to change the uid and gid for this user account to match the number recorded as uid ang gid from above. Write down the old values as well.
    8. In the new user, change the default shell to csh or tcsh rather than bash.
    9. From a Terminal or XTerm, run the following (this may take a big):

      					sudo find / -user <UID> -print -exec chown <usr> {} \;
      sudo find / -group <GID> -print -exec chgrp <group> {} \;
      
      (replace UID with the old UID number and usr with the new user name to associate file ownership.)
    10. Log out and log back in as yourself.
    11. Links for more info:

      1. Help creating new user accounts and matching UID/GIDs
      2. Detailed steps with graphics.

Page last modified on Tuesday 22 of March, 2011 15:58:03 EDT