OS X Mountain 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. For instance, the Server app lets you create a global password policy for all users, to view and edit UID and GID numbers, and create server-based home folders.

Setting up and managing user accounts with the Server app

The Server app lets you manage user accounts alone; Profile Manager lets you manage devices. Mountain Lion Server doesn’t care which device a user works on — Mac, PC, iPad. The user accounts are attached to the person, not the computer or device. Multiple users could share a client computer, but each could still have his or her own user account. Similarly, a single user with a single account can operate multiple devices on the network.

Profile Manager, on the other hand, can do mobile device management through the use of computer accounts.

Creating new user accounts

To create and manage user accounts in the Server app, click Users in the sidebar to the left. For group accounts, click Groups. You see the window shown in Figure 16-1, which includes user accounts already created.

Whether you’re using accounts stored locally on the Mac or on a shared network directory, the procedure for creating new accounts is the same. However, you do want to make sure that you know what you have. If you create a bunch of local accounts when what you really want are Open Directory accounts, you’ll have ...