I have my Mac's workspace down to a science-- everything is exactly where I want it and tuned just exactly how I think it should be. And so, even though it's a little silly, whenever a friend comes over and wants to use my computer, I always hesitate for just a second to let people invade my little workspace.But now, those worries are over-- reader Michael C sent us a tutorial he wrote up for how to make the best use of Leopard's Guest account, and though he comes at it from a business' perspective, it seems like the perfect plan for letting my guests use my Mac without messing up my stuff. Basically, Michael walks you through how to log into the Guest account, and then how to save the settings you implement after customizing it (usually, they're wiped out on logoff, but his method has you backing up the defaults and putting your own in their place).
The only drawback is that any new accounts you create will use the same default settings at first, but I bet you could just load the backups and then create the new account and you wouldn't have any problems. And that's a very small price to pay to have a clean, configured guess account all ready to load up for anyone who happens to come over. Very nice!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-10-2007 @ 11:08AM
Markus Drass said...
Mac users with a focus on security should deactivate the guest login, it's simple too dangerous, guest can e.g. create cronjobs and connect themselves to other WLANs …
(read at http://www.macmacken.com/2007/11/03/gast-bei-mac-os-x-leopard-vertrauen-ist-gut/)
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11-10-2007 @ 5:29PM
EJP said...
The method described in the blogpost seems a bit counterintuitive and a bit much work to achieve what you can do easily from before. Just create a regular user account. Call it Guest 1. Fix permissions levels and configurations as you see fit. Save. Done.
Use the default Leopard Guest log in for occasions when a lot of configuring is either unnecessary or where time and occasion would permit a personalized one time config. and the Guest 1 account for guests who need a given configuration as you see proper.
Of course the wise words of post #2 are well-heeded.
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11-10-2007 @ 5:35PM
Michael Coyle said...
EJP, you're missing the point of the new Guest account: when you log off, it's deleted. Every time someone logs in, it's a virgin fresh user.
If you create a Guest 2 account as you suggest, bookmarks remain, browser history, downloaded files, etc.
For your friends, it's no big deal, but it work it could allow one person to access files and emails from the previous user.
Trust me, it happens all the time!
Mchael
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11-10-2007 @ 7:29PM
Derek said...
The one thing that I don't like with the guest account is that you can't remain logged in. I want to be able to keep running my stuff in the background.
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11-10-2007 @ 8:22PM
Keenkreations said...
Nice! I've been looking for a way to customize the guest account...
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11-10-2007 @ 11:23PM
JKT said...
You can use this same general procedure to customize the default prefs for any user accounts you create on your Mac in the future or who log on using an external authentication (OD, AD, etc.) I found it did not work for the Dock in 10.4.10 (which I reported as a bug to Apple), but did in 10.3.x thru 10.4.9. Good to see the general procedure works in Leopard too.
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