Comments on: MacInTouch: updating then resetting a Mac for an Out of the Box experience

By: StyleMac.com

StyleMac.com — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 06:52:46 +0000

Reset your Mac’s Out-of-the-box experience

This is an awesome tip. I should have known about this some months ago when I sold my iBook. Theconsultant.net explains how to reset your Mac so it starts with the Out-Of-The-Box experience again, that is Intro-Movie, Account setup, Network-Setup, etc…

By: JazzDude

JazzDude — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 11:50:55 +0000

I tried the script on a machine running Panther. Doesn’t work, gives me an error when trying to delete the 501 user. .AppleSetupDone file isn’t deleted either. Does this run only on Tiger?

By: lolopb

lolopb — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 16:44:59 +0000

My mistake, I forgot to check if the user is called admin. In this case, we should not delete the admin group but just removing the user from the group.

The linked zip file is correct now, here is the code :

#!/bin/sh

#########
# This script will erase user with UID 501, the first created
# It also removes the associated group and removes the user
# from system groups.
# Finally, it removes the file indicating the Setup Assistand was done so
# it’s relaunched at next boot.
#########

#########
#
# Laurent Pertois, Massy, le 5 octobre 2005
#
#########

NIDB_FILE=”/var/db/netinfo/local.nidb”
PASSWORD_FILES=”/var/db/shadow/hash”
USER_SHORT_NAME=”`/usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -search /users 0 1 uid 501 | /usr/bin/grep -w “name:” | /usr/bin/awk ‘{print $2}’`”
USER_GENERATEDUID=”`/usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -read /users/${USER_SHORT_NAME} generateduid | /usr/bin/awk ‘{print $2}’`”
USER_HOME=”/Users/${USER_SHORT_NAME}”
APPLE_ASSISTANT=”/var/db/.AppleSetupDone”

if [ ! -e “${NIDB_FILE}” ]; then
echo “There is no NetInfo Database !” ;exit
fi

echo ” Deleting user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ !” 2>&1

echo ” Deleting user ‘${PASSWORD_FILES}/${USER_GENERATEDUID}’ !” 2>&1 /bin/rm “$PASSWORD_FILES/$USER_GENERATEDUID” “$PASSWORD_FILES/$USER_GENERATEDUID.state”

echo ” Deleting user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/users !” 2>&1 /usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /users/$USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Deleting group ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/groups !” 2>&1
if [ “${USER_SHORT_NAME}” = admin ]; then
echo ” admin is a system group, we can’t delete it, we will remove the user at next step” 2>&1;
else
/usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /groups/$USER_SHORT_NAME;
fi

echo ” Removing user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/groups/admin !” 2>&1 /usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /groups/admin users $USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Removing user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/groups/appserveradm !” 2>&1 /usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /groups/appserveradm users $USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Removing user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/groups/appserverusr !” 2>&1 /usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /groups/appserverusr users $USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Deleting ‘${USER_HOME}’ !” 2>&1 /bin/rm -r “${USER_HOME}”

echo ” Deleting ‘${APPLE_ASSISTANT}’ !” 2>&1 /bin/rm “${APPLE_ASSISTANT}”

———————

Beware of line cut !

By: dAVE

dAVE — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 15:44:54 +0000

Tweaks and additions to this can be found here: macintouch.com and here tuaw.com.

Included are details on wiping the netinfo database to remove users created during the setup.

Dave

By: lolopb

lolopb — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 13:06:59 +0000

Oups the URL has gone :

http://lpertois.free.fr/mosx_scripts/del_user_ni_en.sh.zip

By: lolopb

lolopb — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 08:37:21 +0000

Well, that method doesn’t erase the first user, its group and all groups he’s integrated in.

I have a shell script that does it so I can have a perfectly out-of-the box experience (ie the user created by the assistant has UID 501 and so on…). You just need to start in Single-User Mode, fsck, mount the boot volume as readable then execute the script and, finally, remove the script.

Put the script at volume root (so you won’t search it when in SU mode) and make it executable (chmod +x /path/to/the/script.

Here is the script :

==============================

#!/bin/sh

#########
#
# Laurent Pertois, Massy, le 13 juillet 2005
#
#########

if [ ! -e “${NIDB_FILE}” ]; then
echo “Il n’y a pas de base NetInfo !” ;exit
fi

echo ” Deleting user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ !” 2>&1

echo ” Deleting user ‘${PASSWORD_FILES}/${USER_GENERATEDUID}’ !” 2>&1
/bin/rm “$PASSWORD_FILES/$USER_GENERATEDUID” “$PASSWORD_FILES/$USER_GENERATEDUID.state”

echo ” Deleting user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/users !” 2>&1
/usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /users/$USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Deleting group ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/groups !” 2>&1
/usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /groups/$USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Removing user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/groups/admin !” 2>&1
/usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /groups/admin users $USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Removing user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/groups/appserveradm !” 2>&1
/usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /groups/appserveradm users $USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Removing user ‘${USER_SHORT_NAME}’ from NetInfo/groups/appserverusr !” 2>&1
/usr/bin/nicl -raw “${NIDB_FILE}” -delete /groups/appserverusr users $USER_SHORT_NAME

echo ” Deleting ‘${USER_HOME}’ !” 2>&1
/bin/rm -r “${USER_HOME}”

echo ” Deleting ‘${APPLE_ASSISTANT}’ !” 2>&1
/bin/rm “${APPLE_ASSISTANT}”

==================================

Beware of line cuts, I have a downloadable version here :

Feel free to improve but don’t forget to tell me :

legends AT free DOT fr