Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Setting Up the Login/Logout Process

Once you’ve set up more than one account, the dialog box shown in Figure 11-1 appears whenever you turn on the Mac (or whenever you relinquish your turn at the Mac by choosing

→Log Out). But a few extra controls let you, an administrator, set up either more or less security at the login screen—or, put another way, build in less or more convenience.

Login Options

Open System Preferences, click Accounts, and then click the Login Options tab (see Figure 11-6). Here are some of the ways you can shape the login experience:

• Display Login Window as. Under normal circumstances, the login screen presents a list of account holders when you power up the Mac, as shown in Figure 11-1. That’s the “List of users” option in action.

  If you’re especially worried about security, however, you might not even want that list to appear. If you turn on “Name and password,” each person who signs in must type in both his name and his password—a very inconvenient, but secure, arrangement. (The “List of users” screen is also the only way to log in as >console, a troubleshooting technique described in Section B.11. It’s also one way to sign in with the root account [Section 11.7] once you’ve activated it.)

  Note

  You don’t have to visit System Preferences just to turn on the “Name and password” screen; you can also do it on the fly, when you’re signing in.

  When the usual “List of users” ...