About Adam Knight
Location
Austin, TX
Home page/site
http://www.hopelessgeek.com/
Author Biography
Adam Knight is one of the founders of Mac Geekery and is a geek at heart. Programmer by day, hacker by night, his daily life revolves around the Macintosh platform, which he has been a user and programmer for since the early days of System 7 when his LCII replaced his Apple //c.
In-between tech jobs, he’s managed to learn the basics of any web hacker: PHP, MySQL, Perl, Apache, Linux, *BSD, and the intricacies of ./configure —prefix=~/bombshelter/. Today, codepoet is concentrating on blogging again, writing some software for the Mac by himself (including Notae) and for his company (such as Photonic) and has a few other toys coming out soon. Bug him over AIM or email [link fixed].
Thanks for the tip.
Few notes:
- I create the secret account in System Preferences – I quit System Preferences – I opened Terminal and typed in:
sudo dscl .
But I got the following error:
jarod is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Do I need to enable root?
Also, this tip doesn’t remove the secretuser’s name from the ‘FastUser Switching’ menu or the Login Menu (if you’re listing the users). In the Login menu, Tiger shows ‘Other’ which is a giveaway.
Any idea?
Thanks again.
Jarod
PS. Is it possible to hide the user by going into the NetInfo Manager and changing the UID and GID to something under 501? Is that the same thing as the Terminal command you mention?
sudo can only be used by an administrator and the dscl commands solve the rest of your concerns.
I followed through your steps successfully. Logged out and logged back but the secret user account was STILL visible in the Fast User Switching menu as well as the Login Listing.
Here is what I did to solve the problem:
After following your steps, I entered the following in Terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow \
HiddenUsersList -array-add secretadmin
then I entered this:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SHOWOTHERUSERS_MANAGED -bool false
Only then, was the user account completely hidden and visible anywhere.
Make sense?
I hope that helps.
Jarod
PS. In NetInfo Manager I noticed that the GID of that secretadmin is still the original number (i.e. 502). Shouldn’t that be changed to 402 as well? Everything is fine and hidden while its still 502 but I’m just wondering.
Thanks again.
It is true that in Tiger merely making the uidNumber less than 500 no longer does the trick. The preference Jarod refers to above is the new thing.
However, there is also a new problem with a hidden user. If you view your login panel as a list of accounts there will now be a selection for “Other…” This kinda makes it clear that there are other accounts on the machine. The old trick of changing the uidNumber did not cause this issue.
The 2 commands that I list above; once entered in Terminal, get rid of the ‘Other’ in the login list, as we all the listing in the ‘Fast User Switch’
- Jarod
I tried this method and it does work. One little detail I’d like to mention: whenever your hidden user is logged in it will be visible in the Fast User Switching menu. In other words, if you switch to another user they will be able to see that your account exists. So if you don’t want to blow your cover then log out before you leave the computer!
This is an extremely stupid question, but now that I have done all that, how to I log in to the hidden account?
Through terminal? There doesn’t seem to be a way.
(This worked wonderfully, though. Thanks for sharing the advice.)
In System Preferences → Accounts → Options set the login window to use name/password fields instead of a list, then login with the short name of the account.
I followed the instructions, and the hidden account doesn’t show up in the System preferences, but it does show up in the login window. I reset the UID back to 502 using NetInfo, and I’d appreciate help on out to make it invisible to the Sys Pref and loginwindow
Thanks.
Follow the instructions in this comment for that.
I’ve tried to follow to this guide, but I can’t make the account disappear in system preferences. I’m completely new to mac and terminal, so I guess I’m doing something wrong. Can anyone help me here?
I can make the account/Other… disappear in the loginwindow etc…, but it is still visible in system preferences. I’m running Mac OS X Tiger now
Yeah, i had the same problem and just gave up after around 15 tries.
So then, how would you go about deleting this invisible user?
wups, never mind, just change that number back
I did all of what you guys said above, but now I am in a big problem. When I log into my hidden account the home folder is called root, and almost nothing works… how can I go back to the original setting, or how can I delete this account? I am obviously new to going into the Netinfo
I’ve followed the instructions in this tip and everything has worked beautifully. One additional question I have is can the Apple Remote Desktop service in the Sharing Preference Pane be hidden? I don’t want other users to be able to disable my Remote Desktop access. Since the other users are admin users (standard is just too limiting) I can’t just lock them out from the Sharing preferences.
Actually, I have been trying to do the same thing. I’ve had limited success though.
My approach so far is to edit the .nib file, which I’m guessing is the interface file that the actual program sends it’s information to.
In 10.4 I was able to turn off the last three items in the list by deleting the ARD value in the .nib file. Unfortunately in 10.5 it doesn’t seem to be as easy.
We’re launching 50 macbooks tomorrow and if I don’t find a way around this, I will just have to resort to removing the sharing prefpane.
Anyways, how has your luck been with this?
Can anyone elaborate on how this is done for Tiger by removing the nib entries?
Woohoo!!! I figured out how to do it, and it is clean! So I thought that I would share it…
sudo vi /System/Library/PreferencePanes/SharingPref.prefPane/Contents/Resources/servicelist.xml
This xml file is the file which tells the interface/application/prefpane what services to list. BACK IT UP BEFORE EDITING!
Make the correct settings in ARD that you would like, and then remove the section for ARD in the xml file.
ESC :wq
Restart System Preferences, and POOF!!! It’s gone!
Hope that works for you too!
Is there anyway I can delete an account that is showing up at the login screen but not in the system prefs?
cd: Invalid Path
DS Error: -14009 (eDSUnknownNodeName)
>
on leopard..
everything above is terrific. i got all done: hidden from login window apparently out of Fast User Switching, no or hidden Home dir (i use none) BUT what i cannot get to work us my admin users out the sys prefs Accounts.
the two admins are both 500 class UID.
coudk somebody pleae list excatky what i need to do to get them off the sys prefs Accounts list?
i’d be greatly appreciative.
what UID shoud they beans then what?
also, are there any final commands that should be run so a UID change retains user prefs or any other final tidy up command?
that request just above is for Leopard 10.5.1!
Way new to this, Sorry.
Getting Error -14134 (eDSAttributeNotFound) /var/root
are var and root generics and what do they correspond to or where would I find them. I have some Ideas but am afraid of screwing something up
Hey can someone repost the process but for Leopard, the commands seem different, but I don’t know much about terminal so. . .
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