Member Avatar for saltex

Hey all,

Wanted to ask a question about the guest profile on Mountain Lion. I have always been a little insecure about changing and adding new feats to the terminal, so I'm trying to figure out a way that I can be more secure. I have recently edited both bash profile/rc to customize my needs. However, I think I want to take it a step further and start adding more elements to my environment. I'm a Web Developer, how about zsh?

I was wondering if I could use the Guest Profile to make changes that are not always be correct, or add a plugin thats not sturdy. In other words, I want a environment that I can mess around with, and another that is stable to my development needs. Can you even make changes to the Guest Profile since it's not an Admin? Should I just make a completely new user?

Anyways, hopefully I can get some feedback about this. I would really enjoy a new style to my terminal since I spend so much time at the command line all day.

~ slemp

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by macmad

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asked about using the Guest profile as a playground for terminal tweaks (zsh, plugins, etc.). The Guest account on macOS is not a good long‑term sandbox: its home folder is temporary and is removed at logout, Guest has no admin rights so system‑wide installs or adding shells to /etc/shells won't persist, and when FileVault is enabled the Guest session is restricted (Safari‑only). As suggested, a separate boot/partition is a full isolation solution, but it is heavier than most people need.

Safer, practical alternatives:

  • Create a dedicated standard (non‑admin) test user. It has a persistent home, no admin privileges, and can be thrown away if something breaks.
  • Use a VM (VirtualBox, VMware, Parallels) or a separate boot volume for full OS-level isolation and easy snapshots.
  • Try zsh interactively first instead of changing the login shell.

Quick, safe commands to try and to change shells (adapt paths as needed):

# locate an available zsh
which zsh

# (one-time) if a custom zsh is installed (Homebrew), add it to /etc/shells
sudo sh -c 'echo /usr/local/bin/zsh >> /etc/shells'

# change login shell for the current user
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zsh

# simple backups of current dotfiles before experimenting
cp ~/.bash_profile ~/.bash_profile.bak
cp ~/.bashrc ~/.bashrc.bak

Additional tips: track dotfiles with Git (keep a ~/.dotfiles repo and symlink), test frameworks (oh‑my‑zsh, prezto) inside the test account or VM first, and avoid piping unknown install scripts directly into a shell as root. For most workflows a test user + versioned dotfiles gives the best balance of safety, persistence, and speed compared with using the Guest account.

Member Avatar for macmad

Didn't you mother ever tell you not to play with live ammo? LOL Seriously though, if you want to do modifications on the unix level, why don't you partition you HD and set up two Installs of Mountain Lion. One for testing and one for live. I have four partitions, three are bootable. One is Lion, still waiting for some software to catch up and two with Mountain Lion. One is a pristine install with nothing installed but 10.8.2. I use this to test out tweaks and "modifications" before I bring it live. Saves my bacon many of times. No big deal if I have to reinstall. The app store allows you 5 copies for free so set up as many as you see fit!

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