[PowerMatt]

My church just bought 2 DP machines for use in the video system. One is for running Director, PowerPoint, and maybe Keynote. The other is for FCP, Photoshop, and other related editing. It takes quite a few people to run the whole system for each service and we don't want to give everyone access to everything. We would like to be able to set access for each individual user similar to how this is done in XP. We would also like the ability to create groups for different levels of access. What is the best way to accomplish this? How does Net Info Manager come into play in all of this. Please help.

[Camelot]

Check the 'Accounts' pane in System Preferences.

You can create accounts for each individual. Once the accounts are created, click the 'Capabilities' button to define how much access each user has, including which applications they're allowed to run (defaults to All).

Depending on the number of users it may be easier to define a group and use group-level permissions, but for a few users, this is the simplest way to go.

[PowerMatt]

Originally posted by Camelot:
Check the 'Accounts' pane in System Preferences.

You can create accounts for each individual. Once the accounts are created, click the 'Capabilities' button to define how much access each user has, including which applications they're allowed to run (defaults to All).

Depending on the number of users it may be easier to define a group and use group-level permissions, but for a few users, this is the simplest way to go.

Thanks. I will try that and see if it meets my needs. It just seem a little under-powered for what I need though. Thanks.

Edit (update): just tried this on my machine. It does everything I want except for groups. I want to be able to set permissions for certain groups of flies for certain users. I know in Linux distros you can etc/groups to create/modify groups and give these permissions. How is this implemented in X. We tried etc/groups in Terminal but with no avail.

[rantweasel]

Originally posted by PowerMatt:
I know in Linux distros you can etc/groups to create/modify groups and give these permissions. How is this implemented in X. We tried etc/groups in Terminal but with no avail.

Netinfo. It runs most of the stuff that you'd find in /etc on most other Unix hosts, such as /etc/passwd, /etc/groups, /etc/services, /etc/protocols, etc. There's a whole mess of Netinfo references out there, and I don't have OSX in front of me at the moment...

mathias

[Millennium]

Originally posted by rantweasel:
Netinfo. It runs most of the stuff that you'd find in /etc on most other Unix hosts, such as /etc/passwd, /etc/groups, /etc/services, /etc/protocols, etc. There's a whole mess of Netinfo references out there, and I don't have OSX in front of me at the moment...

It should be noted that NetInfo Manager sucks. And I mean, it really sucks. I'm not sure they've even touched the code since DP4, except to add a proper toolbar, and eve that was done with a minimum of effort (you can't customize it at all, and one of the items isn't even labeled).

It's rumored that this is because Apple is trying to drop NetInfo completely and replace it with a more modern LDAP database. Unfortunately, that doesn't do much for us until that's done.

OSX Server has good group-management tools, but they don't provide anything like that for Client. I think someone might have come out with something a while back, but I don't remember what it's called and I don't seem to be able to find it on VersionTracker.

[PowerMatt]

Originally posted by Millennium:
It should be noted that NetInfo Manager sucks. And I mean, it really sucks. I'm not sure they've even touched the code since DP4, except to add a proper toolbar, and eve that was done with a minimum of effort (you can't customize it at all, and one of the items isn't even labeled).

It's rumored that this is because Apple is trying to drop NetInfo completely and replace it with a more modern LDAP database. Unfortunately, that doesn't do much for us until that's done.

OSX Server has good group-management tools, but they don't provide anything like that for Client. I think someone might have come out with something a while back, but I don't remember what it's called and I don't seem to be able to find it on VersionTracker.

Is there a way, then, that we can limit the files that a particular user has access to without having to but OSX Server. I played around in NetInfo for about an hour and got very little accomplished. I guess a manual of some sort might be in the works. Anyway, the machine that most of the non-admins will be using is going to remain an OS 9 box for a while, if not indefinately. Its a G3 400 so I am not sure if OSX will be able to keep up with the high speed demands of live, real-time video production. Well, the system gets officially installed tomorrow so this Sunday will be our big test. Thanks.

[krezreb]

Yes, NetInfo does suck, but there IS a way of setting up groups. You can duplicate an existing group, rename it, and specifiy multiple users like this (user1, user2, etc...) If you look at the formatting of other groups inNetInfo you can kinda figure it out. For instance I wanted to allow guest access to my computer via FTP, but the 'guest' account was in the same group as me: staff, so I could not deny a guest access to my files w/o also denying access to my roomate's account. So, I just made a new group called guest, made sure user guest was in no other groups and voila, guests can access just what I want, not even see what I don't want them to see.

Now does anyone know of an ftp client that runs right in the web browser?