you only see the lock if you select at the top the network users or network group
I’m going to rant about an Apple Design decision, but it has nothing to do with any i-device of any kind. It’s purely around the Mac OS X Server 4.0 App that’s used to configure a Mac acting as a network server. The app’s never been that great, but this really steamed me.
A bit of background: On a computer, you have user accounts. These users are considered “local” because they only exist on that computer. Servers can provide “network” accounts, which can be logged into from anywhere. Apple provides this through an open source implementation of LDAP named OpenLDAP.
When you go to administer users, you find the following screen:
Looks pretty easy – I should be able to click on any of those users and reset their passwords. However clicking on any user (local or network) and selecting the box at the bottom shows a variety of options (like Change Password” Grayed out). Hmm…
So I did some digging around and found the link that I quoted at the top. Apparently by some divine force you should just know that if you select “Local Network Users” from the drop down at the top (instead of “All users”), a magic little lock will appear that lets you authenticate as a directory administrator (i.e. the person in charge of network user accounts) and THEN you can access those options.
Now I get that you can’t access those options before you authenticate – but geez Apple – could you give us a frickin’ hint? Maybe a box that says “Authentication Required”, or the lock icon is gray unless we select a network user? Something other than a magical appearing/disappearing lock!