Apple Mac OS X Server manual Administering Group Accounts, Mounting a User’s Home Folder

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To create a home folder for users in the local domain:

$ sudo createhomedir [(-a-l-n domain)] -u uid

You can also create a user’s home folder using the serversetup tool.

To create a home folder for a particular user:

$ sudo /System/Library/ServerSetup/serversetup -createHomedir uid

The command displays a 1 if the user ID you specify doesn’t exist.

Mounting a User’s Home Folder

You can use mnthome to mount a user’s home folder. The mnthome tool unmounts the AFP (AppleShare) home folder that was automounted as guest, and remounts it with the correct privileges by logging into the AFP server using the current user name and password.

To mount a user’s shared home directory on an AFP server:

$ mnthome -p password

See the mnthome man page for more information.

Administering Group Accounts

A group is simply a collection of users who have similar needs. For example, you can add all users with a particular task to one group and give the group permission to access certain files or folders on a volume.

Groups simplify the administration of shared resources. Instead of granting access to various resources to each individual who needs them, you can add the users to a group and then grant access to the group. Information in group accounts is used to help control user access to folders and files. Individual users may belong to multiple groups, depending on their access needs.

A group can be nested within another group. A group that contains another group is called a parent group, and the group that is contained is called a nested group. Nested groups are useful for inheriting access permissions at login time.

Chapter 8 Working with Users and Groups