How to reset Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard back to the setup assistant

In a service environment, it is often necessary to boot a newly installed copy of Leopard and create a user in order to install additional software, run Apple updates, etc. It’s also nice to be able to give the user the first run experience after this is done. The following will accomplish this.

After installing software and running updates, reboot the system into single user mode. (CMD-S at startup)

Run the following commands:

mount -uw /
rm -R /Library/Preferences/
rm -R /Users/username/
/bin/launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist &
dscl . -delete /Users/username
dscl . -delete /Groups/admin GroupMembership username
rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/username.plist
rm -R /Library/Logs
rm -R /var/log
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
shutdown -h now

Make sure to edit the “username” portions of the commands with the actual name of the user you created. On the next reboot the system will launch the setup assistant and let the user do basic initial setup and create a user for the system.