Is it possible to be tweaked so that OS X won't ask for password when switching users? Or so that OS X won't ask for password in the login screen?
As long as they are not administrative users, yes. (Since you indicated you still want passwords for administrative tasks.)
It is also essential that password is required for any remote login attempts — as they're in the default installation — be it SSH, SMB, VNC or the like.
In that case, you must only allow logins for administrative users.
The best way to do this is to create a chroot jail for the user. I'll clean up the answer here when I get home but I posted the solution on my blog.
https://thefragens.com/chrootd-sftp-on-mac-os-x-server/
Below are most of the instruction from the above post.
First, you should create the new user in Workgroup Admin and either assign them access privileges for SSH via Server Admin or assign them to a group that has SSH access privileges. Further discussion is below.
From the Terminal, start off right.
sudo cp /etc/sshd_config /etc/sshd_config.bkup
sudo chown root /
sudo chmod 755 /
sudo mkdir -p /chroot/user/scratchpad
sudo chown -R root /chroot
sudo chown user /chroot/user/scratchpad
sudo chmod -R 755 /chroot
Every additional new user added will then be something along the lines of the following.
sudo mkdir -p /chroot/user2/scratchpad
sudo chown root /chroot/user2
sudo chown user2 /chroot/user2/scratchpad
sudo chmod -R 755 /chroot/user2
Every folder it the path to the chroot jail must be owned by root. I don't think it matters what group the folder is in. What I did above was to
- backup
/etc/sshd_config
- change ownership of the root directory to
root
- change permissions of the root directory to 755
- create a chroot folder
- create a user folder inside the chroot folder
- create a folder inside the user folder that user can modify
- set ownership and permissions
Now to edit /etc/sshd_config to the following.
#Subsystem sftp /usr/libexec/sftp-server
Subsystem sftp internal-sftp
Match User user
X11Forwarding no
AllowTcpForwarding no
ForceCommand internal-sftp
ChrootDirectory /chroot/user
This creates a chroot jail that when the user logs in will drop them into the folder /chroot/user, in that folder is a folder they can add things to /chroot/user/scratchpad.
If you want to create a Group in Workgroup Admin for 'Chroot Users' then add the new users that you created in Workgroup Admin to the Group you won't have to keep editing the /etc/sshd_config file. Instead of the above, add the following. Make sure you add the 'Chroot Users' group to the SSH access ACL in Server Admin.
Match Group chrootusers
X11Forwarding no
AllowTcpForwarding no
ForceCommand internal-sftp
ChrootDirectory /chroot/%u
To test whether the above is working, issue the following from the terminal.
$ sftp user@domain.com
Password:
sftp>
Best Answer
I had the same problem and it turned out the computer was looking for an external hard drive to mount that wasn't connected properly. If you have any external hard drives, you may want to try unplugging them and then doing a forced restart?