When connecting to a server from Mac OS X, what name will your system use when you bring up the Connect to Server dialog box? By default it shows the full name of the user authenticated to a client computer. But, not everyone wants this behavior. Therefore, you can change it by altering the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization.plist file.
The first thing you can do is add a key called UseDefaultName, which will tell the system to use a static value to populate the user field. That static value is then put into a string for Default Name. To make the UseDefaultName field true:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization UseDefaultName -bool YES
To then set the string for that default name field:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization DefaultName “Charles”
Or if you wanted nothing to default into the field, you’d leave it static but give it nothing to put into the field (you do still need the key there though, so don’t skip this step):
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization DefaultName “”
To have the field populated with the short name instead of long name, you would change UseDefaultName back to NO (after all, it isn’t a static setting, the short name):
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization UseDefaultName -bool NO
And you would then add a key for UseShortName and set it to true:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.ap
ple.NetworkAuthorization UseShortName -bool YES
Or, if you wanted to To change everything back, just delete the keys we created earlier:
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization UseDefaultName
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization UseShortName
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkAuthorization DefaultName
