Mac OS X for Unix Geeks

Understanding Directory Services

In Mac OS X 10.1.x and earlier, the system was configured to consult the NetInfo database for all directory information. If you needed to do something simple, such as adding a host, you couldn’t just add it to /etc/hosts and be done with it. Instead, you had to use the NetInfo Manager (or NetInfo’s command-line utilities) to add the host.

However, in Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), NetInfo functions more as a legacy protocol. Instead of being a major player in the directory services world, NetInfo’s role has been reduced to that of the local directory database for machines that are not participating in a network-wide directory, such as Active Directory or OpenLDAP. NetInfo is still present on Mac OS X systems, but you can perform most configuration tasks by editing the standard Unix flat files. By default, Mac OS X 10.2 is configured to consult the local directory (also known as the NetInfo database) for authentication, which corresponds to /etc/passwd ^[6] and /etc/group on other Unix systems. You can override this setting with the Directory Access application. For more information, see Section 3.3, later in this chapter.

For users whose network configuration consists of an IP address, a default gateway, and some DNS addresses, this default configuration should be fine. You’ll need to tap into Open Directory’s features for more advanced configurations, such as determining how a user can log into a workstation and find their home directory, even when that ...