RSS feedAs I already blogged before, there where some changes in the user creation. I noticed the new notification for the mysql user which changed in Leopard into _mysql, the underscore appears on almost all the users that aren’t connected to people. The only users without an underscore are ‘daemon’, ‘nobody’, ‘root’ and me.
But more has changed I found out. As where I first used the Netinfo tools to create users for daemons to have them use it, like the vmail user for the virtual mail directory. But in Leopard these tools are gone! There is also no GUI tool to have a look at them.
There is a new tool in town, it’s called the ‘Directory Service command line utility’, ‘dscl’ for short and is command line only! See this article in the Apple knowledgebase and the dscl man page here.
Here is a example on how to use the tool which you have to use as root or use with the sudo command. To find out the UID of the postfix user you use the following command:
Which returns:
NFSHomeDirectory: /var/spool/postfix
Password: *
PrimaryGroupID: 27
RealName:
Postfix Mail Server
RecordName: _postfix postfix
RecordType: dsRecTypeStandard:Users
UniqueID: 27
UserShell: /usr/bin/false
This means another task for rewriting the documentation. Which makes me a bit sad.
8:34 pm
The Workgroup Manager tool included in Apple’s Server Admin Tools provides a gui that, with a little awkwardness, can be used for administering local users and groups:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/serveradmintools105.html
When you run the application, it will bring up a Connect dialog which you can cancel out of  unless you are actually accessing Mac OS X Server.
To access the local host’s users and groups, select “View Directories†(command-d) from the “Server†menu. It will probably bring up an alert warning you that you’re working on a local, and not network-visible, database  which is what we want.
The icon tabs on the left of the window that comes up allow you to view the users, groups, and some other things we don’t need on Mac OS X (but which are relevant if you’re running Mac OS X Server). To make any changes, you have to click the lock button near the top right of the window and enter an admin user name and password.