How I kept my Mac user environment after uninstalling Likewise Open

Wow… has it really been a YEAR since I last posted to this blog? Unreal. Anyway, I recently asked around if anyone knew how to recover a Mac user account AFTER uninstalling Likewise Open. None of my CITRT peeps had any idea, but someone in the Likewise forums gave me a hint, and this is how I did it. But first, let me back up a bit and explain what I was trying to accomplish…

Last summer I started using Likewise Open as an AD client on my MacBook Pro, which simply allows me to log into my Mac using Active Directory credentials. While in general the software has done its job, there are some quirks that I’m tired of living with (seemingly random LONG login times being the most annoying) AND I wanted to try a client that can handle DFS shares, so it was time to retire Likewise Open and try AdmitMac. But there’s a problem. When you start using Likewise Open, it lets you “migrate” your existing local Mac user to a new location, which lives under /Users/local/DOMAIN/<user> on the Mac. However, when you un-install Likewise, there is no “revert” function to put the user in this non-standard location BACK to /Users/<user> where it belongs so that you can log into it as a normal local user.

The process of getting things back to normal is very simple and here’s what I did:

1. Logged out of the Mac and logged back in as ROOT
   
2. Created a new “jimm” user on the Mac using the normal method in System Preferences | Accounts and gave it administrator rights. This is the new local user I need to use as “me” since the one under /Users/local/DOMAIN/jimm would no longer be accessible once Likewise was uninstalled.
3. Used the GUI to copy ALL of the directories and files under /Users/local/DOMAIN/jimm to /Users/jimm (which is where my new local account lives). Told it to overwrite any existing directories and files when prompted. In case it’s not obvious, all I’m doing here is copying my entire user environment that was under the Likewise location to the correct location for my local user. Logging in as ROOT let me have full access to the file system to accomplish this copy… the only problem being that the files were now in the correct location with the WRONG owner information.
4. Launched Terminal and typed cd /Users/jimm
   
5. Typed chown -R jimm:staff * This command changes the ownership of all directories and files within my user hive to have the owner “jimm” and group “staff.”
6. Logged out and back in as my new jimm user, and verified that everything was correct in my environment and all of my files were accessible.
7. Used the Directory Utility to unjoin the Mac from my domain.
8. Opened Terminal again and typed sudo /opt/likewise/bin/macuninstall.sh to uninstall Likewise. Using sudo was necessary here as I was logged in as myself instead of ROOT.

Now Likewise is completely gone, my user environment is in tact and back in the correct place, and I’m ready to try AdmitMac. But that’s for another post…