UID is the User Identification Number of an account, all accounts have them.
users (and viz. accounts) are not necessarily human, certain
processes (programs/groups of programs etc) are also users and have
their own UID's for various reasons such as so that they can have
permissions set to do stuff that the normal user can't or to stop
them from going amok and doing stuff they shouldn't do (writing to
another processes memory allocation etc.) THIS IS A GOOD THING - as
you don't want everything running with Root (God mode) rights.
i.e. Root is UID 0. Your built in web server (if your running it) is UID 70
you can see this in the activity monitor utility when you select the
"all processes" then double click on one that doesn't have your login
name against it
UID's allocated to processes are 500 and under, the first user you
create is 501 and then new created users sequentially incremented
from that.
You can, and their are valid reasons for doing this, change a user's
ID (it's not quite as simple as typing a new UID somewhere) to be
below 501 and when you do that that user becomes "invisible" to all
other users with UID's over 500. Or you can go the other way (not
recommended for non human UID)
top hit from google got this which has among other off topic stuff
is the gist of changing UID
http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~eme/mac.html
umm let me hazard a guess, off the cuff and all that, that somehow
the new user has been created with a UID (User ID) of less than 500?
UID's of 501 or lower are generally reserved for system
processes and are hidden from the GUI's list of users
can you explain this number figure a bit more, what does it relate to?
ta
--
gary dorn
north perth
-- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List --
Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml>
Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml>
Unsubscribe - <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
WAMUG is powered by Stalker CommuniGatePro
--
~
Mark Secker Computer Support Officer
ph# 61-8-6488 1855 (ECEL) <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
University of Western Australia - CRICOS Provider No. 00126G
~
"It takes an idiot to do cool things.... that's why it's cool"
- Haruhara Haruka (FLCL)
Ubi fumus, ibi fumus
<http://ecel-mark.ecel.uwa.edu.au/~marksecker/index.htm> (sometimes works)
