Wrong user name for network connection

[Bill Cheeseman]

on 2008-04-20 5:47 AM, Axel Luttgens at luttgens at fusl.ac.be wrote:

> From your description, it seems one could infer that all boxes on
> your home network are standalone ones (i.e., not bound to an OD server)?
> In which case accounts involved in the above are all local ones?

Correct.

> When writing "Connecting to the rogue machine as my .Mac email address
> works perfectly well", do you mean that you may enter "myusername at mac.com
> " and corresponding password in the login window on the rogue
> computer?

That is NOT what I meant, but By Golly I can. What a surprise! This suggests
that some data file somewhere on the rogue machine itself identifies two
short user names. Maybe that's what I need to fix, but where is it?

> As well as make use of that "myusername at mac.com" name when
> connecting through AFP?

Correct. This is what I had meant in my original post.

> Out of curiosity, could you show the user record of that user (yes,
> who would have guessed, with something like dscl . read /Users/
> myshortname) on the rogue box?

On the "rogue" machine, substituting "cheeseb" for "myshortname" in the dscl
command, I get a record with 5 fields, including:

   RealName: Bill Cheeseman
   RecordName: cheeseb cheeseb at mac.com <a long number that might be a uuid>
   UniqueID: 501

But I get exactly the same record on a "good" machine that does NOT exhibit
the "connect as: cheeseb at mac.com" problem.

> On the machine that "always connects as my .Mac email address", does
> the "rogue" machine appear in the Apple/Recent Items/Servers menu item
> (not sure of the translation)?

"Machines" do not appear in that menu item, only hard drives and shared
folders that have been mounted. For example, from a "good" machine I see the
"rogue" machine's startup disk as "G4" (which is the disk's name), but I do
not see the "rogue" machine's computer name (which is "BillCheesemanG4").

> If yes, perhaps could you try to get rid of it, either by clearing the
> whole menu, or by deleting the corresponding entry in the ~/Library/
> Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist file.

Clearing the menu does not change the connection behavior.

It does remove entries from the "Servers" branch of the plist file.

On the good machine, I notice that, in the "Servers" branch of the plist
file, servers contain a field with the key 'Alias' and a value that is a
'Data' value that is not human readable, and a field with the key 'Name' and
a value of, for example, "G4" if I just mounted the "G4" startup disk. There
is no sign of a user name, since the Alias value is not human readable. But,
whatever, deleting it does not change the connection behavior.

In the plist file's "Hosts" branch, however, I do see every file sharing
"machine" on my network, including some that are old names since abandoned.
These are in fact "machines," named, for example, "BillCheesemanG4". These
items do not appear in the Recent Items menu at all, and cleaning that menu
does not remove them from the "Hosts" branch of the plist file. I deleted
all of them referring to "BillCheesemanG4", just to see what would happen,
but it made no difference in the connection behavior. (I will presumably
find out later if it fouls up something else.)

> Unless I'm wrong, the alias information stores the user name to be
> used for the connection.

Maybe so, but removing it from the plist file does not change the connection
behavior.

I also found a folder containing URL link files at ~/Library/Recent Items.
It had lots of files in it, including at least one relating to the rogue
machine. I deleted all of them and rebooted, but it made no difference in
the connection behavior.

On the rogue machine, I looked at the plist file and found that its contents
were quite different. In the "Hosts" branch, it included Alias items named
"cheeseb" and "Bill Cheeseman". I deleted both of them and rebooted the
rougue machine. This did not change the connection behavior on the good
machine.

So, no satisfaction yet. Do you have any other ideas?

--

Bill Cheeseman - bill at cheeseman.name
Quechee Software, Quechee, Vermont, USA
www.quecheesoftware.com

PreFab Software - www.prefabsoftware.com