Mac OS X Lion Server For Dummies®

Managing Accounts with the Server App

This section describes everything you can do with the Server app to manage user and group accounts, including a hidden feature and a few tricks.

Logging in with the Server app

In Lion Server, the Server app is preconfigured to connect automatically to the server it's installed on. But you have to log in if you're running the Server app for the first time or from another Mac OS X 10.7 system, or if you've changed the hostname of the server postinstallation. To log in, perform the following in the Server app:

1. Choose Manage Connect to Server and choose your Mac, or Other Mac for a remote Mac; click Continue.
2. Type the hostname of the server in the Server field and enter the administrator's username and password.
3. Click the Connect button.

Once you're logged in, you'll see your server listed in the sidebar under Hardware.

For best results, always enter the server's fully qualified hostname in the Server field, usually in the form server.example.com. It could also be server.private, or server.local if you entered these forms when you installed Lion Server. Use of .local usually means that DNS isn't running on your network. The .local domain denotes Bonjour networking, Apple's zero-configuration host-to-host networking protocol. (See Chapter 3 for more on .private and .local in Lion Server.)

Setting up and managing user accounts with the Server app ...