NetInfo Manager
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| NetInfo Manager | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Developed by | Apple Computer |
| Latest release | 1.4 |
| OS | Mac OS X |
| Genre | Networking |
| Website | Apple - Mac OS X |
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (November 2007) |
NetInfo Manager is a Mac OS X application to manage the built-in Mac OS X UNIX directory system.
It is found in /Applications/Utilities/NetInfo Manager.app in Mac OS X versions 10.0 through 10.4.11 but it has been removed in Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard". In 10.5, the functions typically previously associated with NetInfo Manager have been moved to the Directory application, and the Accounts pane of System Preferences. (In addition, the nicl NetInfo command line utility has been replaced with dscl command.)
All versions of Mac OS X have used Netinfo (until Leopard 10.5). Netinfo was historically used by NextStep as an OS configuration database. The major uses for netinfo were as an alternate configuration database for the /etc files. Users, groups, host entries and file system mount records have historically been stored in plain text files that are read/write root-only, and read world for everyone else. The netinfo database on Mac OS X was typically stored in /var/db/netinfo/nidb.local, as of Leopard all contents of this file have migrated to /var/db/dslocal - each NetInfo record is now a .plist (an XML structure for representing structured data commonly used on the Mac OS X platform). For example a user record named "admin" and its contents can be found at /var/db/dslocal/nodes/default/users/admin.plist. To the trained eye you will see the contents of this .plist file represent the common posix user information plus some information unique to Mac OS X. Groups can similarly be found at /var/db/dslocal/nodes/default/groups, other record types follow the "default" portion of that file path.
NetInfo Manager was historically used by end users to modify the contents of the NetInfo database for operations such as changing a user's shell attribute, managing groups, enabling the root user, editing filesystem mount records, and host records. All of these operations can be accomplished with Leopard using new and existing tools provided with the OS.
[edit] Methods for enabling the root account on Mac OS X Leopard
- command line: dsenableroot - man dsenableroot for more information (works in Panther, Tiger, Leopard)
- command line: sudo passwd root - (works in Panther, Tiger, Leopard)
- Launch Directory Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Directory Utility) - Edit Menu
- OS install media: password reset utility will enable the root account and set a password for it
[edit] Methods for editing users attributes on Mac OS X Leopard (user shell, uid, primary gid, home directory path)
- command line: dscl (Panther, Tiger, Leopard)
- System Preferences:Accounts Pane - unlock the accounts pane - right-click/control-click on a user account - pop-up menu "advanced" - this panel will let you edit user attributes
[edit] Methods for adding file system mount records on Leopard
- edit /etc/fstab
- Launch Directory Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Directory Utility) - click show advanced settings - click on mounts in the tool bar
- command line: dscl can be used to manage mount records in the new dslocal database
[edit] Methods for adding host records on Leopard
- edit /etc/hosts
- command line: dscl can be used to manage host records in the new dslocal database
- documented method using dscl can be found here [1]
[edit] Methods for managing group records on Leopard
- command line: dseditgroup - man dseditgroup for more information (Tiger, Leopard)
- System Preferences:Accounts Pane - unlock the accounts pane - click the "plus" button - in the pop-up menu you can choose "group"
It is not recommended that you edit groups using dscl - because while possible the group schema on Mac OS X is quite complex and hard to manage manually via a tool such as dscl.
Other tools of interest for editing directory information on Leopard include:
dscl dsimport dsexport dscacheutil dsmbrutil dseditgroup dsenableroot ping id groups pwpolicy passwd
[edit] External links
The computer world article above is highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand more about how Mac OS X uses directory services (NetInfo, LDAP, and Active Directory). A good solid understanding of Open Directory is recommended for anyone making changes in this space.
