September 2008
Beginner to intermediate
426 pages
10h 42m
English
Content preview from Mac OS X For Unix Geeks, 4th EditionBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 5. Directory Services
A directory service manages information about users and resources such as printers and servers. It can manage this information for anything from a single machine to an entire corporate network. The Directory Services architecture in Mac OS X is called Open Directory. Open Directory includes flat files (such as /etc/hosts), LDAPv3, other services available through third-party plug-ins, and even its own XML-based data store.
This chapter describes how to perform common configuration tasks, such as adding a user or host on a standalone Mac. If your system administrator has configured your Macintosh to consult an external directory server, some of these instructions may not work. If that’s the case, you should ask your system administrator to make the changes you need.
Understanding Directory Services
Coming from Unix or Linux, you’re probably used to modifying files such as /etc/passwd and /etc/group to add and edit users and groups. On Mac OS X, however, if you need to do something simple such as adding a user, you can’t just add the new user to /etc/passwd and be done with it. Instead, you’ll need to work with Mac OS X’s Directory Services.
In Mac OS X 10.1.x and earlier, the system was configured to consult the NetInfo database for all directory information. To make changes to the directory, you had to use the NetInfo Manager (or NetInfo’s command-line utilities).
As of Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), NetInfo functions started to become more of a legacy protocol ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.