Apple 10.5 Leapard manual User Accounts, Guest Account

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When you assign full directory domain administration privileges to a user, the user is added to the “admin” group in the directory domain. This does not grant the user local admin privileges on the servers hosting this directory domain or on any other servers or clients bound to this directory domain.

Each directory domain has a domain administrator account, and a domain administrator can create additional domain administrators in the same domain. Any user with a user account in a directory domain can be made a directory domain administrator (an administrator of that domain).

For more information, see “Giving a User Full Administrative Capabilities” on page 72.

User Accounts

Depending on how you set up server and user accounts, you can use Mac OS X Server to support users who log in using Mac OS X computers, Windows computers, or UNIX computers.

Most users have an individual account used to authenticate them and control their access to services. When you want to personalize a user’s environment, you define user, group, computer, or computer group preferences for that user.

The term managed client or managed user refers to a user who has administrator- controlled preferences associated with his or her account. Managed client is also used to refer to computers or computer groups that have preferences defined for them.

To learn more about how to set up user accounts, see Chapter 4, “Setting Up User Accounts.” To specify the preferences for user accounts, see Chapter 10, “Managing Preferences.”

Guest Account

You can provide services for users who can’t be authenticated because they don’t have a valid user name or password. These users are known as guest users. If your computers run Mac OS X v10.5 or later, you can enable a guest account, which is specifically designed for guest users.

The guest account allows anonymous access to a computer. The guest account has a local home folder that has its contents erased when the user logs in or out of the guest account.

The guest account is best used for common-access computers, such as those in a library or open lab where you may not need to log user access and where the user maintains his or her files separate from the local computer.

Chapter 1 User Management Overview