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Interns gone Wild!!! Help, Please
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immsav
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Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Oxford
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Jul 18, 2003, 10:12 AM
 
So our new tech intern got fed up and stormed out of the building after deleting all of his work from his Mac. That's frustrating, but it's not a big problem because we have backup discs.

I'm worried because I--stupidly, I admit--allowed him to set himself up as an administrator on his machine. The computer is still up, and he is still logged in, but I want to make sure that we don't lose any of his applications or remaining files if I log him out.

Is it possible to create a new administrator account while logged in as the intern, log out, log back in as the new admin, and delete the intern's account while keeping his files. I'm particularly worried that we won't be able to access our OS 9 version of Quark that we have on the machine.

Excuse me for my lack of knowledge about X; I'm still pretty new to Macs and new to the OS.

Thanks very much for any help,

immsav
     
-Q-
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Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA
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Jul 18, 2003, 10:32 AM
 
I was so hoping for something more along the lines of Clinton and interns than this, but I guess you would have posted in the lounge instead.

You could create a new administrator account while still logged into his, but you'd have to save all of his currently open work before you could log out and then log in as the new account. OS X won't have user switching until 10.3. I'm not sure if there's a command line way to do it, but nothing that I'm aware of through the gui.

But if you're just worried about losing his apps and docs after you delete his account, OS X saves the stuff even after you delete the account (I could be wrong about this as it's been almost a year since I've had to do this but I don't think so). But to be safe you could also create a new folder at the root level of the HDD and copy his entire user folder into that and then delete his account.
     
zachs
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Join Date: May 2002
Location: New York City
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Jul 18, 2003, 10:57 AM
 
Yes, it is possible to create a new admin account. Assuming you are running version 10.2 ("Jaguar"), just use the Accounts pane in System Preferences.


When deleting a user, it will save the entire home folder as a disk image in /Users/Deleted Users. You can just mount that image if you need files. (Yes, you will have to save all unsaved work before deleting the user.)

If his applications are in the default /Applications directory, then those won't even be touched. Of course, if they were installed on his account, you may have permissions problems (same with his documents, files, etc. on the disk image). But those are easy to fix by selecting the problem file and pressing Command-I.

Quark for OS 9 shouldn't be affected, as permissions, etc. don't effect OS 9.

Hope this helps.
     
DigitalEl
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Join Date: May 2000
Location: Not Quite Phoenix
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Jul 18, 2003, 06:22 PM
 
Does anybody else want to know what would cause an intern to storm out, seemingly burning a bridge in the business he or she supposedly wanted to learn more about?

Do tell!
Jalen's dad. Carrie's husband.  partisan. Bleu blanc et rouge.
     
TheTraveller
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Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: California, USA
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Jul 18, 2003, 06:34 PM
 
I might be missing something here, but why don't you just boot off the Jaguar CD and reset the password? He's locked out, and you get complete access to all his files.
     
   
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