Changed home directory of OSX Server user account, user disappeared, access remains I'm dealing with my company's Mac Mini (with loads of data I cannot risk on an external drive, but cannot plug out because of below) running Mac OS X Server 10.6.4.

My problem was that I needed to share a local folder with a client (giving him write permission). And my idea was that I could create a local account with very strict permissions.

Having found the option to change the home directory (system preferences > accounts > right-click > advanced) my thinking was that this would make the account unable to access anything but this directory (which may very well be wrong I now see).

Thus I changed the home directory to the directory I actually wanted to share (which is on this crucial external drive), which worked almost accordingly when logging in to the mac mini remotely (another shared folder was available as well).

But since the change claimed to require a reboot I rebooted the mini. Now I realized the account I had just created was no longer available under System Preferences > Accounts. It's still possible to access the mini using the accounts details remotely, but not when trying to log in on the actual mini itself.

What I find puzzling is that the account neither exists under:

$ /Users/


nor:

$ /path_to_external_drive/dir_i_chose_as_home/


However, when entering the Server Admin and assigning File Sharing permissions, I can see the new account in the users list when clicking add (the + sign) to assign permissions.

Now I could just leave this account there but this feels highly irresponsible.

I do understand it was very ignorant of me, changing the home directory without understanding it's implications. You are welcome to comment on whether or not this whole idea actually was unfeasible and unsafe but I would highly, highly appreciate if you could help me safely get rid of this newly created account (which essentially is my question).

How do I remove an account I can no longer see via System Preferences > Accounts (because I have changed its home directory)?

Thank you in advance
Open up terminal and try:

$ dscl . -list /groups GroupMembership


You should get a list of users along with which group they belong to. You should look for user/admin accounts including the one you recently made; This command will show you all users with the recently created one most likely near the bottom:

$ dscl . list /users


To get information about a user:

$ dscl . read /users/foo


Which will verbosely spit out all of the basic information, yielding this information near the bottom:

NFSHomeDirectory: /Users/foo


if you want to delete a user:

$ sudo dscl . delete /users/foo


asta la bye-bye! from there you can decide  whether or not to delete ex-users directory.