What is the 10.5 replacement app for NetInfo Manager in 10.4?

Question

Am reasonably sure I'm having user/permission issues ( apps blowing up when printing or saving a file ), (unknown user) populating many getinfo windows. Clean install of 10.5/1/2, then dragging over files from my old account ( 10.4.11, files rescued by Data RescueII ) ) to new drive. Much screwey-ness ensues...
Anyway, I'm thinkin' that a trip through NetInfo Manager would do the trick, ( realign User/Group ID's, etc. ) - but no can find. Is there a central place to this in 10.5? Or is 10.5 not quite fully baked yet...?
jeff

Answer 1

Jeff,
No, there's no Netinfo Manager. The closest thing to it is Directory Utility.app, but it doesn't handle users and groups like NM did.
There is a command line application to manipulate users and groups, but it is not well documented at this time. A better, GUI alternative is to download and install the OS X Server Tools, and use the Workgroup Manager utility (yes, it works perfectly well on OS X client).
However, your problem has nothing to do with "wonky" groups, but rather incorrect group ownership. You don't need to mess with the database, but rather you need to correct the ownership of the files. First, a bit about Leopard...
In recent versions of OS X (as you probably know), a paradigm has been in place where users are given a unique group based on their short name and UID. For whatever reasons, Apple has backpedaled on this, and users have now been returned to the "staff" group, globally. Given the fact that we are now securely in the realm of ACLs, instead of traditional POSIX permissions, this makes a lot of sense.
The problem, though, is that files and folders migrated from an earlier system will, in many cases, retain the old group ownership, and Leopard has no way to recognize such. Thus, the dreaded "unknown" group. Fortunately, this can easily be corrected with a simple, but carefully-applied command in Terminal:
<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">sudo chown -R username:staff /some_directory</pre>
In the above command, you must replace "username" with your own short name (or that of the user to whom you wish to grant ownership). For the "/some_directory" variable, I would recommend just dragging the folder in question into the Terminal window from the Finder. Just make sure that you do not change the ownership of any system files, and everything should be fine.
When you press <RETURN> after typing this command, you will be asked for your admin password. Enter it (it will not be echoed) and again press <RETURN>.
Scott