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8 Working with Users and Groups
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.