#45 Jörg: Menu based selection of user home folders

[Kristofer Widholm]

one has to type a lot (clean cache, wait, clean cache
for user, yes, username, wait, another user, yes,
username, no more user, check preferences, wait, yes,
first user, username, wait, yes, second username,
wait...) each time. Annoying. :-)
(please keep in mind that the keyboard is not
internationalized in single User mode, so even typing
the users path can be an pain - in german even the
"y"-key for "yes" is located on the "z"-key, the "/" on
-, the "-" on "ß"... painfull. Really. Painfull.

Thanks a lot,
Jörg

[Kristofer Widholm]

Logged In: YES
user_id=583959

Jörg, I will try to create a menu based user selection
function in an upcoming release. Thanks.

[Droemel]

Logged In: YES
user_id=896542

Just an idea: what about the possibility to switch to right keyboard layout when
starting Applejack (maybe as a command line option like "auto"). I don't if this
would work in single user mode.

Michael

[Kristofer Widholm]

Logged In: YES
user_id=583959

Jörg, here is the problem I'm facing. What if you are
administrator of a Mac with 50 user accounts. Your screen
will fill up with all the user accounts, and you won't be
able to correlate a menu input code (number or letter) with
the user. I remember now that this was the rationale behind
the current system (why I didn't make it menu based to begin
with). If you know the user's home directory, you can get
the work done whether you are able to see all the user
account listings fly by or not.

I suppose I could write some kind of data-paging mechanism,
but writing that in bash sounds like a nightmare to me. But
maybe it's the only way to go...

AppleJack displays the first 10 users. Hit > for the next
set < for the previous set of 10.

When you see the list of users that has the account you want
to work on, you enter the menu key (or perhaps the user id
could be the menu key) for that user and presto, you're good.

So, assuming I could even do this in bash, the other problem
becomes once the user has been selected, I'll also need to
query the NetInfo database a second time to find the user's
home directory so I know where to look for caches or
preference files, etc.

My worry here is, what if the NetInfo database is corrupted
(what if, in fact, that's the reason for all the problems)?
I am currently pulling the home directories from the NetInfo
database, but perhaps that's not the best strategy. But just
scanning the /Users directory is not good since some user
accounts might be located somewhere else.

Any thoughts/suggestions?