Delete a user account in OS X

STEPS:

1) Click on the Apple logo at the far left of the menu bar and select “System Preferences”.

View user login history via OS X Terminal

This command-line tool displays a history of user accounts that were logged into the computer as well as the time and date of access from up to 2 months prior. It will even tell you the amount of time users spent logged in. I’ve had to use this method several times to catch high school students who were using their college friend’s usernames and passwords to login to our lab computers. So here’s how, its really simple..

Remove ‘Other’ account at login screen in OS X

The “Other” account option at the mac login screen is enabled by default. Networked users can login via Active Directory (AD) or Open Directory by choosing this option. However, in some enterprise situations it’s safer to hide the “Other” option. For example, our Art Department’s file server uses AD to manage student access to its its network sharepoints. One day I noticed a student was logged into the server itself (it’s located in one of the labs and looks like any other computer…don’t ask). Not good. By hiding the “Other” option from the login screen I was able to prevent students from locally accessing the server.

Adobe Flash CS6 – AIR SDK version 3.4 is missing

This error came after installing CS6 on the lab computers manually (one-by-one). Usually if you’re in a local account like “admin” the error should fix itself the first time around, but when you’re dealing with user templates and student accounts, it’ll keep popping up every time Flash is opened. Definitely not what we want.

Disk Utility – Couldn’t unmount disk

I came across this problem while trying to erase a partition on one of our file servers. After an hour or so of intense frustration, I came up with two ways to fix this..

Stuck at spinning wheel during startup

I nearly had a heart attack when this happened. I was making configurations on our file server, and after rebooting came across the spinning wheel of death. Fortunately I was able to narrow the problem down to two things: either a file(s) required at launch became corrupt, or system-level file permissions got screwed up.

Apple Remote Desktop – A newer version of this software already exists on this disk

This fix is intended for those who don’t yet have access to the latest Apple Remote Desktop installer.

When installing Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) from an old dmg file, you’re actually dealing with two pieces of software:

– ARD Admin

– ARD Client

Mac app window(s) automatically opening at login

This is caused by copying certain plist files, or in some cases the entire English.lproj folder over to the User Template without closing all open windows first. Unless something is done about it, the app window(s) (Terminal, Finder, Safari, etc.) will pop-up at every student login.

CS6 for Mac still prompting for serial & authentication

With the previous Adobe Creative Suite software versions, once you input the serial number and Adobe ID credentials it asks for in the beginning, you could deploy the image out to the labs with no problems. However, starting with CS6, image deployment breaks the license (serial + credentials) which is a pain because you end up having to manually input the serial number and credentials into each computer in every lab. Fortunately, the folks at Adobe have come up with a solution to this mess. Not only does it save us time but it helps keep our hair black (or blonde…or red…whatever color your hair is. As long as it doesn’t turn white). They’ve even blessed us with a video presentation on how to do it.

Premier Pro error “Media Cache Not Found”

This error is a result of copying unnecessary preference files over to the User Template. In this case, the culprit is com.Adobe.Common CS6.plist which is a pref file that tells Premier Pro where its cache folder is located. The problem began when you first opened Premier Pro using the admin account. Premier Pro saw that its cache folder was located in /Users/admin/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/ and it stored that path name in the com.Adobe.Common CS6.plist file so it could remember where to look next time. Now, when you copy that plist over to the User Template and open Premier Pro from a normal user account, Premier reads the com.Adobe.Common CS6.plist, thinks that its cache folder is located in /Users/admin/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/ and will begin searching for it. If it can’t find that specific directory (either because that user doesn’t have permissions to access the admin’s Library folder or in my case, because the admin user’s home folder has been hidden) this error will show.