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Leopard Under the Hood: Netinfo is Gone
by , 4:55 PM EST, November 16th, 2007
While most users are oohing and ahhing over the cool new features in Leopard like Time Machine and the 3-D mirrored Dock, Apple has also been making quiet changes under the hood, starting in Mac OS X 10.2, to finally eliminate Netinfo, the system configuration database, according to John Welch at Macworld on Friday.
Netinfo was first used in the NeXTStep system and is a system configuration database that is similar to Sun's NIS, LDAP, and Microsoft's Active directory. Now the end has come.
"When I say 'end," I mean it in the most 'end-ish' sense. In Mac OS X 10.5, Netinfo is gone. Not 'deprecated,' not 'hidden away for only the most advanced users.' It’s gone. Deleted. It does not exist. No more Netinfo database, no more Netinfo Utilities such as nicl, no more Netinfo Manager. The entire structure for managing local users, groups, and other such things has been completely replaced by local Directory Services, and the Netinfo Database is now a series of XML files living in /var/db/dslocal/" Mr. Welch, a sysadmin for Kansas City Life wrote.Apple has been preparing for this change ever since Jaguar. The answer to why it was in there in the first place, TMO notes, probably rests with the idea that when shipping a brand new OS, one fixes the essentials and leaves alone things that work. Netinfo worked.
In time, however, Netinfo becamse a step child as the entire industry has moved to LDAP and Active Directory. While it doesn't mean much to the average user, it means a lot to Macintosh IT managers and sysadmins.
"The removal of Netinfo from Mac OS X is a major change from both the operational and historical perspectives," Mr. Welch concluded. "But in end, I think it’s one that was long in coming, and it will make Mac OS X much nicer to deal with from the administrator point of view -- something that will aid Apple as it continues to establish a greater presence in the business world."
Observer Comments
Under the Accounts panel in system prefs, unlock the padlock to make changes and right-click on an account in the list.
There you can select "Advanced options" and deal with the most useful/probable things we used to do under NetInfo, such as changing a user's home directory location (Amen!).
The root user is now enabled through Directory Utility (Applications/Utilities). Use the Edit menu, choose Enable Root User and then type the root user password.
[Warning: All standard warnings about this user apply here. Turning this on is potentially dangerous and you can do real damage to your system with it. If you don't know what you are doing, don't touch this setting; there is a reason it's out of Grandma's sight. If you wish to learn more about this user check out the Wikipedia article here.]
Quotehoultmac wrote:
The root user is now enabled through Directory Utility (Applications/Utilities). Use the Edit menu, choose Enable Root User and then type the root user password.
[Warning: All standard warnings about this user apply here. Turning this on is potentially dangerous and you can do real damage to your system with it. If you don't know what you are doing, don't touch this setting; there is a reason it's out of Grandma's sight. If you wish to learn more about this user check out the Wikipedia article here.]
The same warning applies when i say:
You can also use the command line: dsenableroot .
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