CREATING ACCOUNT NAME

What in a Name?

  When creating an account (System Preferences - Account - New User...) – either the initial account upon installing Mac OS X, or an additional account—you’ll  be prompted for both your Name (e.g.,John Jacob Jingle heimer Schmidt) and something called a Short Name.

Your Short Name is your actual username , or in login name, the name by which your computer knows you.  It is usually three to eight characters long, composed of letters or numbers.  While OS X attempts to choose a sShort Name for your based upon what you entered as your Name, it doesn’t do a particularly good job if your namr isn’t as simple as Sam Smith.  And, trust me. You don’t want to spend your days being known by your computer as johnjacobjungleheimerschmidt.  Choose something short anbd quick to type, like john, johnj, or schmidt.  Here’s why...

Your Home Directory

Your home directory is where you’ll be keeping all your stuff . In it you’ll find special directories for your documents, pictures, movies, and setting  (that’s what the Library is).  Of course, you’re not forced to organize your stuff this way, but it is a good convention.  Feel free to settle in., create new folders, and shuffle thingd about it.  It’s generally a good idea not to throw out the special folders; as the operating system and its applications often make use of them and expect to be there.  In oparticular, don’t touch  your Library folder; it’s the home of your preferences, settings, abd other pieces used by particular applications.

If you chose john as your Short Name, then your home directory will be Macintosh HD - Users - John.  By creating a central place for all your important data, OS X ensure easy backup or deployment on other machines.  Instead of having yo single out your favorite control panels or extensions from OS 9, you can simply backup your home directory.  When you’re ready to restore, simply copy it over to the same location, and your environment (iTunes music library, desktop picture, added software tweaks, etc.)  will take effect the nextime tiome to you log in.

From the command line’s (hack #48) point of view, your home directory again, assuming you Short name is John—is /User/ john.  You’ll sometimes see it referred to on the command line as˜. It’s a shortcuts that saves you from having to type out your full login name when referring to your home directory.  So ˜/ Documents actually refers to /Users/john/Documents (Macintosh - HD - User - john - Documents in the Finder).

Deleting an Account

Deleting an account under, Mac OS X is simple using the accounts System preferences panel (System Preferences - Accounts - Delete User).  This will remove the account and disable the associated home directory.

Deleted accounts, however, are gone but not completely forgotten.  If you take a moment to actually read the co0nfirmation dialog shown in figure 1-7, you’ll learn that the contents o0f the now-deleted account’s home directory are archived as adisk image in Marcontish HD - User - Deleted User.

When and if you’re to permanently delete the contents of an archived home directory, simply g-drag its disk image to the Trash.

UNDERSTANDING AND HACKING YOUR USER ACCOUNT

The Mac OS X  file system is a blend of powerful, ancient Unix  underpinings and the candy-coated shell known as a Macintosh Finder.  To make thisd a reality, Mac OS X pulled off quite a switcheroo! It yanked the filesystem of Mac OS 9 and earlier out from underneath the Finder’s feet, replacing it with the utterly foreign world of the Unix filesystem and all that goes with it.

While all but invisible to the casual user, there are some cracks in the facade, visible upon closer inspection.  Some are useful, others a liitle irritating, and still others simply fascinating and quite hack-worthy.

The hacks in this section poke and prod at the seams, revealing some usefu; techniques for backing up your system, tweaking files and folders, bending aliases to to your wilol, understanding how it all fits together- even dumpster divingin the Trash a little.

1.    UNDERSTANDING AND HACKING YOUR USER ACCOUNT  

Before Mac OS X was released, there wasn’t really a concept of a user or account in the Macintosh environment.  This hack introduxces you to what it means to have an account and what this business of a Home directory is all about.  We’ll also show you to how rename an account- a nonobvious task indeed.

When Mac OS X  first appeared, a lot of people were aghast at the concept odf user accounts, especially when they were the only ones usnig their computer “ Why go through all the hassle when only i Exist?” they asked.  The comnplaints only intensified as users were asked to enter an administrator password [Hack #50] for access to certain files,  sometimes even denied access to settings and files on their own computers—the gall of it!

The reasoning is two – fold: to protect you from yourself and to support Mac Os X’s multiuser environment.

The concept of protecting you from yourself may at first blush appear intrusiv, but we’ve all had an instance where we’ve deleted an innocent file from our OS 9 System Folder, only to discover our idiocy when our system didn’t  reboot, our printer didn’t print, or ourmodem didn’t sizzle.  In this regards OS X has your back; crucial files necessary for everyday operation are protected from overzealous removal.

The multiuser environment of OS X  is based on technology that’s been around for a while in the Unix worl: a system of checks and balances that stop your kid sister from gleefully deleting that Photoshop file you’ve beem working on all weekend.  The whether you’re the only user isn’t a concern; protection from the inside (yourself, your kid sister) and protection from the outside (malicious crackers, viruses, and trojans) becomes paramount.

While a determined user can delete any file on their OS X machine with enough effort (the easiest way being to boot into OS 9), Apple has wisely made it difficult to do so through Mac OS X