Transform an administrator account into a normal one

koyikoyi
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hello, I am pretty new to Mac OS X. So please bear with me.



I bought my iBook G4 this april and started using it since then. However, I have been doing daily work with an administrator account(the first one created on this machine). I just found out that this is actually not a good practice in the security sense. So I decided to do my daily work with a normal account from now on and leave the admin account alone.



But since I have been using this iBook for some time, all the documents I created is owned by this administrator account. And the user preferences of several programs are well customised. So, what is the best way to make the switch? Can I just make a normal account, and change this newly created account into admin one, and convert the old account into a normal one?



I am using Mac OS X 10.3.5 btw.



Please help.

Thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    I think someone confused the advice "never use the root account"... Just using the admin account still protects you from most of the boo-boo's that root allows (the admin account needs an password, root does not).



    While you are technically safer in non-admin mode, we are talking a very slim margin (having to enter both login and password rather than just password).
  • Reply 2 of 2
    koyikoyi Posts: 22member
    I found the answer myself! Although I am not sure whether it is correct to do so, you can try if you feel so



    1. Go to the Account setting panel to create a new account. The account will be created as a normal user.

    2. With the newly created account selected on the left of the panel, go to the Security tab and tick the option at the bottom which reads "Allow user to administer this computer.

    3. Select the current admin account, go to the security tab and untick the same option.

    4. Log out and log in again with the old account. Now your power is gone!!! :P



    That's all.



    I opened the terminal and type:



    $ id



    and I am no more in the various admin groups anymore.
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