Apple Mac OS X Server (Administrator’s Guide) - Manual (Page 141)

Users and Groups 141
m _ (underscore)
m - (hyphen)
m . (period)
Typically, short names contain eight or fewer characters.
You can use Workgroup Manager to edit the short name of an account stored in a directory
domain on Mac OS X Server or a non-Apple LDAPv3 directory domain or to review the short
name in any directory domain accessible from the server you are using.
To work with a user’s short name using Workgroup Manager:
1 In Workgroup Manager, open the account you want to work with if it is not already open.
To open an account, click the Account button, then use the At pop-up menu to open the
directory domain where the user’s account resides. To change the short name, click the lock
to be authenticated. Select the user in the user list.
2 In the Short Names field on the Basic tab, review or edit the short names. Initially, the value
of the short name is “untitled_.” If you specify multiple short names, each
should be on its own line.
After the user’s account has been saved, you cannot change the first short name, but you can
change others in a list of short names.
Choosing Stable Short Names
When you create groups, Mac OS X identifies users in them by their first short name, which
can’t be changed.
If a short name change is unavoidable, you can create a new account for the user (in the
same directory domain) that contains the new short name, but retains all other information
(UID, primary group, home directory, and so forth). Then disable login for the old user
account. Now the user can log in using the changed name, yet have the same access to files
and other network resources as before. (See “Disabling a User Account” on page 155 for
information on disabling use of an account for login.)
Avoiding Duplicate Names
If separate user accounts have the same name (user name or short name) and password, a
Mac OS X computer may authenticate a user different from the one you want it to
authenticate. Or it may mask the user record that should be used for authentication.