User Accounts

[jameswilson]

Hi

I'm new to OS X and I've got a question which is probably extremely basic.

I've set up an account on my mac for another user, but I now want to completely hide certain folders from this user. I only want them to be able to see applications and then have one folder of there own.

Is this possible? If so all help greatly appreciated.

James

[Gee4orce]

I'm not sure what you are asking. By default, when you create a new user they are given a home folder in /Users.

They are only able to access their home folder, /Applications and the /Users/Shared folder, and the /Users/*/public folders by default (unless they are an administrator). Isn't this what you want ?

[jameswilson]

thats kinda what i want, except i want the folders to be completely hidden, so the other user cannot even see them let alone access them.

cheers

james

[Gee4orce]

You need to remove world 'read' and 'execute' permission to the parent directory of the directory you want to hide.

This is done from the Terminal with :

chmod go-wx /path/to/directory

(remove write and execute permission for others and group).

This will prevent someone else from listing and moving into that directory.

The best thing to do is create a few test directories and play around with 'chmod' until you get the desired results.

Be careful though - if you remove permissions to a directory that that user needs, they may not be able to log in, or may loose some functionality.

The easiest thing to do if you are trying to hide a folder is to create a folder in the Finder with no read permissions (use the get info panel to change priveliges), and move the protected folder inside that folder.

[AKcrab]

You may want to download Batchmod (http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=12057&db=mac), which offers a GUI interface to the chmod commands, as well as some other nifty little goodies.

[mervTormel]

be very careful with your awesome power and utilities such as BatChmod.

as Gee4orce alluded, it is recommended that you don't make unwarranted, wholesale permissions changes to files and directories as you could effectively make your system fold faster than Superman on laundry day.

This causes madness and thrombosis as is evidenced by other threads on the board.

Now then, if you want to hide the System and Library folders at the root of your installation, you can add those folder names to the file /.hidden and relaunch the finder (command-option-escape) and those folders will not list in finder windows.

Of course, your users will be able to see/access them in their favorite shell.

Before you edit /.hidden as root, make a copy of it with .dist extension to signify that it is what was distributed with the OS.

% sudo cp -p /.hidden /.hidden.dist

% sudo pico /.hidden

[mervTormel]

now, to prevent users from accessing the shell...

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020213084259198

modify their account in netinfo mgr and change their shell to /sbin/nologin