Working with Users and Groups

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In this chapter you will find commands you can use to set up and manage user and group accounts.

With Mac OS X Server, you can quickly create and administer accounts for users and groups. There are several command-line tools that facilitate working with the directory domains that hold these accounts.

Understanding Accounts

There are three kinds of accounts you can set up with Workgroup Manager: user accounts, group accounts, and computer lists. When you define a user’s account, you specify the information needed to prove the user’s identity: user name, password, and user identification number (user ID). Other information in a user’s account is needed by various services—to determine what the user is authorized to do and perhaps to personalize the user’s environment. Along with accounts you create, Mac OS X Server has some predefined user and group accounts, some of which are reserved for use by Mac OS X.

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, or computer preferences for that user. The term managed client or managed user designates a user who has administrator-controlled preferences associated with his or her account. When a managed user logs in, the preferences that take effect are a combination of the user’s preferences and preferences set up for any workgroup or computer list he or she belongs to.

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Apple Mac OS X Server manual Working with Users and Groups, Understanding Accounts