Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Server For Dummies®

Part II. Creating and Maintaining User Accounts and Directories

In this part ...

Users are the reason for servers. Keeping track of the users is the reason for much that's in Snow Leopard Server. This part focuses on managing those users and their computers, covering the range from small networks to large. I begin by describing how to create and maintain user and group accounts. I describe user authentication, the process in which a user connects his- or herself to the computer with a name and password. The server also provides authorization, the process of controlling access to files and services.

The more users and computers, the bigger the user management task. If you have more than a few users, you may want to set up Directory Services, which let you manage not only user accounts, but the computers themselves. Here, I describe how to use Mac OS X Server's Open Directory to centrally store information about the users and the computers in a single place. A shared directory separates the user from a specific computer so that a user can log in from any computer and access her home directory. This part also describes how you can use Open Directory to set computer policies that determine what software users can install on their computers or what settings the user will experience when he logs in.

On large networks, you may need to access other directory servers hosted on Windows servers. ...