Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Server For Dummies®

Chapter 16. Managing Client Accounts

In This Chapter

• Types of accounts on Mac OS X Server

• Looking at Server Preferences versus Workgroup Manager

• Creating, managing, and deleting accounts in Server Preferences

• Managing various accounts in Workgroup Manager

• Importing and exporting accounts in Workgroup Manager

• Setting managed preferences for Mac OS X clients

When you install Snow Leopard Server, Server Assistant creates a local directory of accounts containing the initial local administrator account. After the initial account, you can create more local accounts with System Preferences — this process is identical to managing accounts in Mac OS X clients.

After you decide to move on to a shared directory of accounts, you can create an Open Directory shared domain, as described in Chapter 6. After a shared directory is created in Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server, use Server Preferences or Workgroup Manager to create and manage accounts.

User, Group, and Computer Accounts

Snow Leopard Server has three types of accounts: user, group, and computer accounts. User accounts aren't necessarily individual people; more than one person may have access to a particular user account, such as a shared administrator account. A user account, identified by a single silhouetted person's bust, has a long name, a short name, a password, and a user ID (UID) number. Depending on the type of user account, you can assign other attributes, such as the user's home folder location.

Note

In the local directory of the Mac OS X ...