[Deal]

Here's a strange one. A user at my institution came with this situation (I did go and witness it as well)

They installed Tiger yesterday. Today they had a user that was not on the system yesterday. The user was called, "System Administrator".

It showed up under fast user switching and on the initial login list. It did not have any folders (home, desktop, etc...).

It is not listed in NetInfo.

It had the same password as the user (who was an admin).

When logging in as System Administrator, the system logged in but showed nothing but the generic desktop background. There was no dock, drives, utility bar, etc... and no way to log out.

Shutting down the system the dirty way, removed the user from everywhere we could find. It was no longer in the user list or fast user switching list. However, we could still su to it in the terminal (so it did still exist).

My only thought on this was the possibility that the nightly maintenance uses this account and for some reason it failed to remove it's tracks as it usually would.

Let me know if anybody has seen this or KNOWS what it is.

Thanks

[Kristoff]

Uh, that's the root account's long name (the "realname" field in NetInfo")

You probably ought not to have messed with it.
root must have been enabled on that machine via NetInfo.

[Deal]

Thanks for the reply.

I guess what I meant by "know" what it is, I meant know why it showed up in the fast user switching list (it's supposed to be hidden). I figured it was root, that's why I thought it was part of the night time maintenance. However, I don't think he enabled root and I don't think that is necessary for root to be invoked by the system.

Have you seen this account mysteriously show up in the fast user switching or elsewhere?

Thanks again,

Deal

[Kristoff]

It shows up on all my machines after I enable root in NetInfo

[Chuckit]

Yes, but he said he didn't enable it. That's what's odd about the situation.

[Kristoff]

He said "I don't think he enabled it"

This means that he can't be certain until he checks for sure.

[Deal]

That's good to know. I'll double check with the user.

However, what's odd even if that is the case, the account disappeared from the list too. This isn't just an appearing act, it's an appearing-dissappearing act

Duane

[Tyre MacAdmin]

WinSwitch app adds the "System administrator" (Which in this case is root) user account to the fast user switching pull-down menu when installed... not sure if you're using that... but if you are that's normal.

[chris v]

This happenned to me today. I've not seen the "System Administrator" in the login window until today. It was definitely root, as I had to type the root password to get in, but same deal-- blank blue background. Killing the login window remotely didn't work, so I had to do a sudo shutdown -r now to get out, from my laptop.

Now, it's not in the FUS menu any more. Strange bug.

[theolein]

I would file a bug report on Apple's feedback page. Then I would wait for 10.4.2.

[macmike42]

Originally Posted by chris v

This happenned to me today. I've not seen the "System Administrator" in the login window until today. It was definitely root, as I had to type the root password to get in, but same deal-- blank blue background. Killing the login window remotely didn't work, so I had to do a sudo shutdown -r now to get out, from my laptop.

Now, it's not in the FUS menu any more. Strange bug.

If the root user has a password at all, it had to have been enabled via NetInfo at one point.

[chris v]

Originally Posted by macmike42

If the root user has a password at all, it had to have been enabled via NetInfo at one point.

I had Root enabled, yes, and did so on purpose. The "System Administrator" showing up in the Fast User Switching menu was abberant behavior though, as I've had Root enabled since probably 2003, and today was the first time that item showed up there. I've had 10.4 installed on this machine for over 2 weeks.