Wrong user name for network connection

[Axel Luttgens]

Le 21 avr. 08 à 13:46, Bill Cheeseman a écrit :

> 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?


I don't think this is the point to be fixed: as discussed hereafter,  
it is legitimate for a user to have more than one short name (see  
below). Moreover, it is very likely that it is the AFP client that has  
somehow stored "myusername at mac.com" as the name to be used for  
connecting.


>> 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,


Only five fields? For a user record that has been created through the  
GUI?


> 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.


Thanks; so, it seems that once a .Mac account has been validated, it  
gets added to the list of the user's short names (as I wrote in my  
previous mail, I have no experience at all with .Mac accounts).
BTW, this shows how multiple short names are implemented: they are  
just an ordered set of values for the RecordName attribute, the first  
one being the "main" one.
But I am unable to guess what that "<a long number that might be a  
uuid>" could be.


>> 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.


Sorry, I've been too elliptic; I should indeed have spoken about  
volumes shared by the rogue machine...


> 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.


The data is just hexadecimal-encoded; part of that data consists of  
character strings.


> But,
> whatever, deleting it does not change the connection behavior.
>
> [...]
>
>> 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.


So far for my rogue guess. :-(


> 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?


Are the two boxes involved in the "phenomenon" running (almost) 24/24?  
And are they both Leopard ones?
If yes, perhaps is this a kerberos thing.
What does /System/Library/CoreServices/Kerberos.app show?

Axel