[Keda]

I am reformatting my Mom's BlueBerry iBook and installing 10.2.6. Everything is going well except for the fact that I cannot change her short user name. I have entered her correct password in the 'Accounts' pref pane, but it won't let me edit the field.

Any suggestions?

This is an iBook 300/288MB 10.2.6. She is the only user on the system.

[OptimusG4]

You might be able to change the name using NetInfo Manager, though I'm not sure if it'll cause problems or not.

[jlemons]

I found the easiest way is to go into users and create a new user with admin priviledges. Then log out and log back in as the new user. Then you can delete your mom's old account and start over. This will allow you to add all new info for her. This is like a clean install though, you will loose any extras you installed on her old account.

[Powaqqatsi]

Originally posted by jlemons:
I found the easiest way is to go into users and create a new user with admin priviledges. Then log out and log back in as the new user. Then you can delete your mom's old account and start over. This will allow you to add all new info for her. This is like a clean install though, you will loose any extras you installed on her old account.

...unless you manually copy the contents of the old library.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by OptimusG4:
You might be able to change the name using NetInfo Manager, though I'm not sure if it'll cause problems or not.

As far as I know, it works fine. This is exactly what the original poster wants to do, as well.

[BatmanPPC]

Originally posted by Xeo:
As far as I know, it works fine. This is exactly what the original poster wants to do, as well.

you need to make sure you get all istances of her old shortname else you will lock yourself out of admin access.

[ckohler]

What about all the documents on the computer still owned by the old username? Won't that be a problem? Forgive me but I'm not versed in how NetInfo works.

[BatmanPPC]

Originally posted by ckohler:
What about all the documents on the computer still owned by the old username? Won't that be a problem? Forgive me but I'm not versed in how NetInfo works.

files are tied to the UID on the filesystem which you arent changing.

[Keda]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm a bit nervous to tinker around with NetInfo Manager, but am willing to give it a shot. Will someone give me some brief instruction on what I should do in this program?

BTW, why is the short name uneditable? I have set up several OSX systems and never run into this before.

[Chris Grande]

The short name was never editable, once you have it there is no easy way to change it. I think this has to do with the fact that some things are tied physically to that name and so it can't be easily changed without breaking certain things.

I wish I was thinking about this when I set up my computer, I would have rather had a short name of 'Chris' instead of 'chrisgrande'. Eh..oh well. Just a visual thing anyway; for me anyway.

[Cipher13]

A users first name is not changeable, essentially. You can recreate the user, and then apply the old UID, and possibly run into a few issues (probably easily fixable with a chown), live with it, or create a second short name and use that (if that's what you wanted to do? Why do you want to change it anyway?).

Only second and onwards shortnames are changeable after they've been set. Realistically, anyway.

[lookmark]

Apple has an article describing a workaround to change the user short name in their Knowledge Base -- check it out for step-by-step instructions.

Basically, you can do it if you have to, but it's a considerable PITA.

[Keda]

Thanks for the link.

I want to change the short name because I forgot to do it when I was setting up her Mac. Now the new short name doesn't match the old.

I'm going to get on this tonight. I have to fedEx the iBook back to her this week.

[Keda]

Ok, all went well with the new user approach. But I am left with one problem...4 application folders are showing up a generic folder icons. They are denying the new user access because they are owned by the original user.

I logged in as root and was able to use the apps, but I could not change their permissions thru the GUI. Can someone tell my what these permissions should be set to and how can I change them?

Most apps are owned my 'System(Me),' can I set these perms. to that?

BTW, I have already run permission repair from the Disk Utility.

Thanks In Advance

[Gavin]

Originally posted by Keda:
Ok, all went well with the new user approach. But I am left with one problem...4 application folders are showing up a generic folder icons. They are denying the new user access because they are owned by the original user.

I logged in as root and was able to use the apps, but I could not change their permissions thru the GUI. Can someone tell my what these permissions should be set to and how can I change them?

Most apps are owned my 'System(Me),' can I set these perms. to that?

Thanks In Advance

this will be easiest in the terminal

you just set the owner to the new user

open the termainal app

switch to root
type:
su
give the root password

now you are root and can do anything to any file. BE VERY CAREFUL THAT THE LINE SAYS THE RIGHT THING BEFORE HITTING RETURN. You can accidently screw things up if you go too fast.

type this line:
chown -R newusername.admin

where newusername is the short name of the person you want to own it.

hit a space then drag the app into the terminal window


you should see something like this:

chown -R newusername.admin /Applications/Utilities/Calculator.app

OK, hit return

that's it. do the same for each application.


this will make the owner of the application 'newusername', admin is the group it belongs to.

chown is change owner
-R means recursive, change the owner for all the files inside this one.

Remember that on OSX applications are really folders full of files, the folder just looks like a file to the finder. It's called a package and makes appliactionms easier to deal with, usless you want to change the owner.

to make the app usable by all users on the machine set the owner to 'root' which is what the others are set to. If you look at this in get info-ownerwship you see the owner listed as 'system'.

chown -R root.admin /Applications/newApp.app

then

chmod -R 775 /Applications/newApp.app

chmod is change mode, this sets the permissions for the user and group. read, write and execute.

775 means owner and group both have full access to it, (open it, change it, run it, move it) others can see it and run it.

if you don't chmod then not every user will be able to use it.

Now the admin user could change the owner in the get info panel but that only changes the owner of the folder not the contents do it doesn't work.

to the the insides of an application folder choose 'show package contents' from the contextualy menu while clicking on an app.


to make sure you did the right thing you can look at the file's setting like this:

ls -l /Applications/Games/Chess.app

you should get:

total 0
drwxrwxr-x 7 root admin 238 Jul 29 2002 Contents

this shows permissions, owner ,group, size, mod date, and name

drwxrwxr-x = 775 that you set above

the leading d shows that it's a directory (folder)

and we set owner to root and group to admin

if you see this, you did it right!

[Keda]

Gavin, thanks for the very complete write-up. It looks like everything is back the way it should be.

Thanks for all the help.

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by Gavin:
switch to root
type:
su
give the root password

now you are root and can do anything to any file. BE VERY CAREFUL THAT THE LINE SAYS THE RIGHT THING BEFORE HITTING RETURN. You can accidently screw things up if you go too fast.

Just as an aside, OS X has sudo, which IMHO is a much better way to gain root access in the terminal.

On an account that's allowed to administer the machine (anyone in group 'admin') type:
[list=1][*]sudo -s[*]Your account password.[/list=1]

This will spawn a new shell process as root.

Sudo has the advantage of not requiring a root password being set, and so is marginally safer. I also find sudo to be more convenient when only executing a few commands as root (the -s flag is not needed, and will only execute the proceeding command on the line as root if omitted).

[Gavin]

Gavin, thanks for the very complete write-up.

Hey, no problem. I didn't really mean to write a book but I hate it when I get a 'just do this' answer which leaves me searching for how to 'just do this'. I also like to know what it is I'm really doing, and how to see that it really worked.

So there you go!



Earth Mk. II -
you're right, I don't think about sudo because I learned all this stuff on linux before there was a sudo.

I just switch to root out of habit.