Login Hook question

[iSteve]

Hi,

We're having an issue with a new computer suite with Firefox. We are running Mac OS 10.5.4 and FFox 3. When a user logs in and launches FFox, they are told that a session is already running and FFox quits. We have found that if you delete the user's FFox Profile folder (inside ~/Library/Application Support/) FFox will open and work perfectly.

I have thought that we can use a LoginHook to delete the user's FFox profile on log in. However, the user does not have permission to run the script as themselves, but, if I run the script as root (which is what LoginHooks run as), the "current user" variable $1 becomes root, so the script tries to delete root's profile folder!!

Does anyone know how to run a script as root, but return the current logged in user as a variable? Also, does anyone know what the unix variable is to find the group of the current logged in user?

Thanks!

[kesomir]

there's getgid and getuid to return the groupid and userid of the process, and there's also getegid to return the effective group of the process.

Not sure how to return a logged in user though, as you can have many.

What about running a script as the user and outputting to a file which you read in the other script?

[HodgeHi]

Just looked on this site:

OS X commands

It lists a command "logname".

I checked it out and it does indeed return the name of the user logged in.
Whether its useful to you or not is a different matter.

[kesomir]

Don't have a mac :P

Glad you found a solution though.

[iSteve]

Just looked on this site:

OS X commands

It lists a command "logname".

I checked it out and it does indeed return the name of the user logged in.
Whether its useful to you or not is a different matter.

Thanks - I'll have a look. Do you know if I can use this as a variable? I need to get a script to delete a path like - /Network/Server/mydomain.sch.uk/<group variable>/<current user variable>/Library/Application Support/Firefox

[HodgeHi]

I've just come across this site which suggest that another user is trying to get the username into a variable ($1) Halfway down there is this statement...

Is the login hook being run on a local account? I seem to remember reading about login hooks breaking in 10.5 because of new issues with $1 failing to be passed to the script with network accounts, whereas everything works fine for a local account...

Don't know if this is indeed an issue?

Here's the rest of the thread. Someone posted a possible script at the end to get the username variable. I have not confirmed it though.

Get user name from login script in 10.5 [Archive] - The macosxhints Forums

[iSteve]

Thanks for this. It's something I will look in to.

I've managed to solve my problem a different way though. We have a "unique" network set up which I have inherited this summer. The rogue Firefox profile folders were leftovers from a previous network set-up and were clashing in some way. I have just searched and deleted them from our homefolder servers en-mass. All our user accounts work fine now.