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Originally Posted by negative_perfection
I've either just witnessed a new feature of the Mac OS, or just plain stupid operator error.
Yesterday I was called upon to assist "the new guy" who was having problems with the network (ie: couldn't print, couldn't use Internet/email). It was narrowed down to a problem with the actual connections: cables, router, etc. He reset the router and then restarted the Mac.
When the Mac restarted it was set with factory defaults: desktop pic was gone, dock was at Apple default, Thunderbird was prompting new account setup upon launch, etc and there was a folder called Library sitting on the desktop.
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All those types of settings are stored in the /Users/~/Library/ folder, where "~" is the short username of the user in question. That's also referred to as the Library folder in the "user domain". There should also be a Library folder, /Library/, on the root level of the hard drive which is referred to as the Library folder in the "local domain". The local domain contains items that are available to all users. For example, there's normally a couple hundred MBs of stuff in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/ for Adobe applications.
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Originally Posted by negative_perfection
When I later arrived in person to check out the problem, I found that the admin user's Library (there is only one account on this machine, running 10.3.9) was sitting on the desktop and there was a new Library folder on the root of the hard drive where it belongs, but with only about ten directories in it that had all been created within the past two hours.
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The admin user's /Library/ folder (in other words, of the user domain) belongs
inside his or her user folder, at /Users/~/Library/; the /Library/ folder on the root level of the hard drive (in other words, of the local domain) is something completely different. Even if there is only one user, and that user is an admin user, they'll still have a Library folder within their user folder where all their personal settings are saved (in other words, settings that pertain only to their account aren't saved in /Library/ just because she/he's the only user).
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Originally Posted by negative_perfection
After poking through the folders of this new Library, I decided it was okay to overwrite it with the original Library sitting on the desktop. I had to reboot in OS9 to do this (dual boot machine), and everything seemed fine after that.
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It sounds to me like what he did was drag his /Users/~/Library/ folder to his Desktop. That would simply move the folder there. On a restart, a new Library folder would be created at /Users/~/ and it would be filled with default settings.
If you attempt to rename or to drag the Library folder at the root level of the hard drive to a different location, you
should be prompted for a password to do so. That's because the "BSD sticky bit" is set for the root level of the hard drive. An item in a directory whose sticky bit is set can only be removed or renamed by a user if the user has both write permission for the directory in question and the user is the owner of the item that's to be removed or renamed. The only exception to that is if the user is the "root" user (a.k.a. "System Administrator" or "system"), since the root user can do anything. If a user is a user with administrator privileges, they'll have write access to the root level of the hard drive. The /Library/ folder, however, is owned by "system", so you can't move that folder without authenticating to elevate your privileges in order to perform that operation. This prompt for a password basically serves as an extra caution so that you think about what you're doing.
While it's possible that he moved the /Library/ folder to his Desktop, he wouldn't have lost all of his settings, since they're stored in the /Users/~/Library/ folder. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you may want to make sure that didn't overwrite the items in the root /Library/ folder with the items from what was his /Users/~/Library/ folder on the Desktop.
Hope this helps....
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