Alternatives or Solutions to Mobile Home Folders

Hello,
I have been using Mobile Home Folders for a while and I can not stand the errors and files that it does not sync any more. Are there any solutions to fix those errrors or an alternative? Even if it just sync the Mail library, Mail is destoryed.
Thanks,
Steven T.

The best option is to sync at only login and logout.
How many computers do you have?
An option to sync is to use a backup appliction like Archiware Backup2go. It has the following advantages:
1.You have one list wher you can see if all computers are backed up or not. Some of my clients computers suddenly doesn't sync anymore for unknown reasons and I have no way of knowing from a central point.
2. You can easily backup your clients portable computers when they are out of office.
3. No more time spending logging in on AD connected computers, which can take minutes for the users.
It is not exaclty as easy to restore a users home folder as it was, ie you need to install an application first and set it up and then restore.
In my case I set up regular users as AD/OD mobile sync, the management who usually have less understanding of waiting times etc is set up to backup using third party applications instead. Saves my lot of headace.

Similar Messages

Open Directory and Mobile Home Folders

Hi All,
I am a bit confused about Open Directory and Mobile Accounts! here is our scenario. We have an Open Directory setup and all Accounts are set to mobile, accounts are almost 250+, my main problem is the Synchronization Conflicts, the accounts are automated to sync every 30 mins, the problem is every now and then schronization conflict windows popups, our users are complaining almost everytime, another problem is all of the users home folder has a qouta of 5GB, problem is there are users who excedd on the qouta some goes up to 60GB and 100GB, how do i solve this two problems. i am about to loose my mind. We setup like this in order for us to have a backup of all files of the users in case problem arises in the workstation. i have notice that synching file error comes up if you have temporary files used by any applications. the home folder of each user will exclude library, trash, music and entourage databse. Please Do help me.!!! Anyone who knows..?
Environment
OD Server - MacOS X Server Tiger 10.4.4
Workstations - mix MacOS X Tiger 10.4.4 - 10.4.7
AFP Home Folder - MacOS X Server Tiger 10.4.6 mounted Xsan Volume for home folders
johnaris
PLEASE HELP!

Thanks for the info, by now i will look into that little utility that is very helpful (console!)
Yes, I was thinking of synching our users at login and logout, the problem here is that, users here has bigger home folders.. mostly about 3GB, and it will took time to login a user, about 6-10 mins, depends on the network, we have networks users that that has slow networks and fast network on video editing users. What I did is that i excluded the Library in the synch options on each unit here, since we are not using Apple's Mail and iCal, it did minimize the synching error but the temp files and date discripancies are mostly that will generate an error, I am having really problems with this.
thanks for the info i really appreciate it.

Migrating mobile home folders

What would be the best way to permanently migrate a network user's home folder(and account information) to a laptop?
Thanks

Hi
For that user (or users) define the appropriate settings in the Mobility Preference in WorkGroup Manager. On next login that user will be given the choice to create a Mobile Account. Choosing the appropriate option will then download from the Server to that particular Client Workstation all of that users' server based home folder.
Once downloaded - or more appropriately 'cached' - access the Accounts Preferences Pane on that workstation and make that user a local administrator if this is what is desired? If there is no requirement for any other account on that workstation, delete those accounts.
Once you've verified all of the data has been transferred to the local drive and if there is no further need for it, delete the home folder from the Server. I would leave the server based account because this may still be needed if that user wants to access other Services the Server is offering. Again I'm assuming this is something you'd want?
As ever try and have a current backup in place of that users' data as a just in case.
HTH?
Tony

Will converting to Mobile home folder overwrite existing home folders?

Hi I have a client who uses entourage 2004 and the users databases (10Gb typical) are stored on the server in their home folders. I was thinking of switching them to mobile home folders so they had a cached copy on their local Mac to improve performance.
Will turning on mobile home folders overwrite any existing data?
Thanks,

Hi I have a client who uses entourage 2004 and the users databases (10Gb typical) are stored on the server in their home folders. I was thinking of switching them to mobile home folders so they had a cached copy on their local Mac to improve performance.
Will turning on mobile home folders overwrite any existing data?
Thanks,

Mobile Network Home Folders and Leopard

How does one connect to a Snow Leopard server using mobile home folders using Leopard client? I am not finding the join preference in the account system preference.
Thanks for your help.

In the Utilities folder, Open Directory Utility and join there, make sure your network interface's DNS server is pointed to the Open Directory server.

Mobile Home problem with Magic Triangle

So I have been setting up a magic triangle for the past few days with an OSX Lion server. I believe it is working properly. The server is running OD and is bound to my AD. I have made an OD group which contains my AD users, and I have set that OD group to have limited application preferences (one of them is to block the App store). All my users have MacBook Airs which they will take off-site, so I enabled mobile home folders in the AD bind and in the OD group mobility settings (with confirmation required).
When I tested it today, with Airs running 10.7.4, here is what happened.
When the system was on the network, it would log a user in, ask to create the mobile account, and successfully create it. Once logged in they were limited to the application preferences that I set on the server. I considered this a complete success.
When I disconnected them from the network, I had expected that they would still be able to log in and the system would fuction the same way with the exception that they would not sync their changes until they were back on-site.
Instead...
When the same user trys to log in it says the AD server is unavailable and then logs them in anyway. However, once they are at the desktop, none of the permissions are in place. They can go to the app store, or do anything else they feel like. Once they are back on the network, all the server based preferences reappear and lock the system down.
So my questions are:
1. Should a mobile account based system compain that it cant find the AD domain when offsite?
2. Why is it not checking some cached verison of the permissions and locking down the notebook when offsite? I can tell that it is caching the user name and password (as loging in as a user the air has never seen before will simply give a login error), as it will let them in, but it is not holding any preferences.
3. How can I prevent users from simply disconnecitng from the network to bypass all my server based policies?
Hope someone can help

Hi,
I'm having a similar problem with exactly the same setup, our clients are 10.7.4 wired not wireless the OD server is 10.7.4 and the clients are authenticating via an AD 2008 R2 domain.
We've had this scenario in the past running 10.5 and 10.6 without any problems but with 10.7.4 the clients' MCX settings are lost when they're not connected to our network. It seems to only lose the settings applied to user groups but not computer groups.
At this moment in time I don't have an aswer I'm still looking, have you found a solution?
I know configuration profiles are the way forward and in the future I'll move over to them but they don't seem to work that well with PHD's at the moment.
If anyone has any thought on this it would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Jay.

Network home folders: iCloud password question re-appears at every logon

Hello,
Is there any way to enable iMessage and Facetime together with Network home folders. Im using Mavericks server (Directory services enabled) and two Mavericks clients. Every time a user that was using machine A logs on to machine B the iClouds password prompt re-appears and subsequently security questions are sent to iOS devices that a new device was added.
Is there a way to circumvent this? I think I tried once in combination with mobile home folders. However, even if I excluded iMessage/Facetime system files from syncing, questions still re-appeared.
The more iCloud services are tied into the system, the more you would like to use them; even if you are using network home folders.
Regards,
Thomas

I also have this question.

Mountain lion Server import accounts & mobile home folder

Hello,
I am new to OS X Server and I have two questions.
First here is the situation.
We are a small company with 10ish mac (Mini, iMac & MBP) running.
So far we had the client account on the machines.
I want them to be server hosted from now. I have a dedicated Mini 2012 for such a use. Everything Gigabit connected.
So here are my questions:
1. How can I Import the acconuts from the different machine including home folder to the server?
2. For some users, on specific machines i would like to creat mobile home folders.
Is this possible?
I created Mobile home folder and it works flawlessly but anytime a user login it creates a mobile folder.
I would like to specify on which machine the account is mobile. On the other machine i want it to be server based.
Thank you in advance for your Help.
G.

Additional info: it appears that certificates are not working either: setting up ical: "the certificate for this server was signed by an unknown certifying authority."...

Where are mobile home sync logs found?

Did some searching, came up empty

This is probably too late for the OP, but hopefully someone else will find it helpful.
The problem is ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist.
If you're using mobile home folders, don't sync it. If you're not, script it to kill it off at login.
This what worked for me.

How do i reconnect mobile account home folders after re-install?

we have problems with our server interfering with the college server. It kept changing our hostname so i had to enable DNS on the second ethernet port on xserve which prevented it from changing it but now is messing up the network as our server is being used for dns by the rest of the college. So i either need to restrict our dns to only answer queeries from specific addresses i.e my laptop and colleagues and forward all of the rest to another dns server. Or i have to re-install the osx server software and change the name to correspond with their servers given name for our xserve. The problem with re-installing it is that the students have a lot of work in their home folders which i can't loose. But i'm aware that the mobile accounts will be tied to the old domain name. Is their any tips you can give us so that i don't loose their home folders and it will sync back the client machines after i have put the new domain name on. I'm also aware that you can export the usernames from workgroup manager but not the passwords. Is there anything else i need to do so that i can just reconnect their accounts to the existing home folders after re-install? In other words i need to know the easiest way to do this to reduce dissruption to students files? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Also will i have to delete the students local folders on their imacs and sync back from the server again?

ok reinstalled everything dns seems to be working have done sudo changeip -checkhostname and it says that both names match but then i started open directory and can't seem to get Kerberos started, i've tried changing it to stand alone then back again but it does nothing. I'm wondering why this would happen? i've tried adding a kerberos record but it doesn't do it just does nothing so i don't know what i'm doing wrong. I wondered if it might be a problem with the two network cards and dns as on ethernet one it is getting the dns name xserve.xxxx.ac.uk (which matches what the college server wants to call us) but on ethernet 2 gets xserve-2.local because it tells me that it already exists on ethernet one and renames it to this. I need to set up NAT so have ethernet coming in on port one and out again on port two. I wonder if my dns is backwards as its got the 192. address the NAT uses but its linked to the ethernet port one dns maybe this is the problem. would this cause open directory not to start kerberos?

Erase mobile account home folders script

does anyone know of a script that will erase all of the mobile account home folders on local machines while keeping the admin and other local account folders in place??

Here is a script I've used to flush all Portable Home Directories (Run as "root" user) --> http://homepage.mac.com/applesd/downloads/flush-phds-script.zip

Mobile Accounts not copying home folders to local machine

Having recently upgraded my MacBook to 10.5 (and having a 10.5 server) I have noticed an error with mobile accounts. My account has not synced for a couple of weeks and I have checked all the directory settings and cannot see any errors.
I've removed all directory services and rebooted, put them back and it will create a mobile account but nothing is being copied to the local hdd. So basically it is functioning like a network account rather than a mobile one.
This works fine on our 10.4 clients but having tried different users on my 10.5 system it does the same....creates the account, mounts the server but does nothing else.
This means when you sync it says its complete but does nothing...its like its lost permissions to the folder on the server but that seems very odd.
Anyone else had issues with 10.5? We have an AD server with our users and a 10.5 server with OD replicating AD and holding the home folders.

Are you still ahving this issue?
Would you do like geekinit in this thread and post some partial screen grabs (although is problem included Windows server Active Directory and profile Manager which I will get up to soon.)
Unable to deploy home folder mobility settings through an Apple MDM server
Did you create a fileshare for Local Network accounts to put their stuff
If so where is OS X server?
Did you tell the user in OD to use that fileshare?
Here's a screen grab example
Francois.

Mobile Home Directory: Setting a relative location for various sub-nets

Question Summary:
1) Is it possible to define a home directory for mobile account users that is relative to the host's subnet?
2) How does one accomplish #1 if possible?
Details
Setup
Users access hosts on three LAN networks connected through the WAN via Branch-Office VPN connections (persistant VPN tunnels that connect our LANs)
If User1 from LAN1 travels to LAN2, User1 has difficulty working, because the mobile account definition points to a host on LAN1 for HomeDirectory syncing, so all files are synced across a slow (5Mb/s) connection shared by all other users. For some users (The CEO, for example), this sync entails transferring Gigs of personal data, so the Mobile Sync across the VPN literally takes several days, if it completes at all.
My ideal setup would allow User1 from LAN1 to access a host at a relative location as apposed to an absolute location. In other words, if LAN1 has the home folder at 192.168.76.23:/HomeFolders/User1, then when User1 moves to LAN2, the HomeFolder becomes 192.168.78.23:/HomeFolders/User1. Regardless the subnet, the User account would be defined in such a way that the HomeFolder would be sought at 192.168.X.23:/HomeFolders/shortUserId
These home folders between the hosts 192.168.76.23 and 192.168.78.23 on LAN1 and LAN2, respectively, could be kept in sync during off hours so that at the beginning of each shift, all files are in all three locations ready for local use, fast access, and more importantly, fast home-syncing during the work day.
Equipment
OS X Yosemite running on various iMac and MacBook hardware configurations.
OS X Server 4 running OD replicas and local DNS's on each LAN.
Ample space for redundant data storage on all networks.
Question
How do I define a HomeDirectory as a relative location to the Mobile Account Users host machine or host machine IP address?
Alternatively, is there a way that I can define a HomeDirectory using a Fully Qualified Domain Name so that I can use the local DNS server to force the redirect?
Previously Tried Idea(s)
Using the same Bonjour Computer Name
On one test, I tried to trick the system by setting the name of the HomeDirectory computer to the same name on all networks. The thought behind this is that, when looking at the HomeDirectory path, the address is defined by the computer name, so if the local computer name matches, the system will automatically point to the host that is on the current LAN, as apposed to the host of the same name on the previous LAN.
This failed due to the fact that the system providing the HomeDirectory storage is the same system that is providing OD replica services, and OD replication requires that each system have a unique name.

Hi,
Yes my home directory is set
more /etc/passwd
sfsys1d:x:301:201:sys1 dev sftp user:/interfaces/dev/system1:/usr/bin/csh
when i log in they go to this directory, through a shell and through ftp ( haven't checked sftp yet)
However i can still go up directories and see what is in the directories above
the permissions are set as below
drwx------   3 root
sshusers
3 Sep 6 08:38 interfaces
drwx--x---   3 root
sshusers
3 Sep 6 15:49 dev
drwxr-----   5 sfsys1d sshusers
7 Sep 19 14:52 system1
I have tried various other permission 700, 710, 740 etc and they all give different results but not the correct one.
The best I have managed to get so far is that they cannot list the files in the other directories, however if they know the names they can still go to them, this also didn;t work in the windows ftp client, as it just showed the file/dirs anyway.
Thanks
Kerry

Mobile homes unreliable and unstable

We are having major problems with Apple's mobile home sync. I hope you can help. I will also contact Apple support. When I hear something useful from them I will get back to this topic and add the info.
We have a studio of 20 graphical workstations and we've had issues that users did not backup their home folder/work. After a lot of discussion and contemplating we bought a new server for mobile homes. So, users have their home folder where they do all of their daily work and every morning and evening when they login and when they logout their home folder is being synced to the server so that all their latest work in on the server. The server is being backupped every night so in this way all data will be backupped and save. That was the idea…
But unfortunately mobile homes seem to be very unstable and unreliable and we are having several issues. Although people login and logout every day without any problem and homesync informs us that syncing goes fine it doesn't sync everything. All home folders are having issues. When I check the backup the most recent data is not in the home folder where it should be. When I check the home on the server it isn't there, or documents are there but not the latest. When I check the home on the workstation it is there where do user put it. When I check the sync status it says everything is OK and the latest sync is of that day. So that is (major!) issue one.
Issue two is that I've had two users complaining that they move their data around in the home folder, just doing their work, and when they log in the next day their data is on the OLD place AND the NEW place. Very time consuming for them and confusing and it is very obvious that the sync process doesn't work.
Another issue is that I've had a couple of users already complaining that when log in they get sync errors. Nothing major in most cases, a file being in use or something and the next sync it syncs without a problem. But now for 3 users it seemed that their folder had problems syncing and whatever I do, I cannot get the folder to sync again, without any clear reason in the logs. I end up deleting everything in their home on the server, delete all appropriate sync caches, preferences, the FileSync folder in the library and the .FileSync folder in home and thus creating a new sync again. Only then when I do the first sync, the syncing process starts working again.
Important to know is that every user has their own workstations and that they do not change workstations. So in that regard they have all their data in one place, THEIR workstation, and that data has to sync one-way: to the server. I could imagine that when people change stations on a regular basis it is hard for the sync system to keep up with the latest changes, but that can't be the issue here.
Any help, tips, solutions, comments, etc. etc. are very much appreciated.
Server: Xserve 2.25 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with Mac OS X Server 10.6.4
Workstations: Various iMac intel stations with Mac OS X 10.5.8 or 10.6.5

Aren't you going to run into update conflicts when someone back at the office updates files you also update when offline?
Perhaps a cellular data plan would solve your problem?

Best way to migrate local users to the network - move home folders?

Hi everyone,
I am about to set up my Mac mini server (Snow Leopard Server). I have one iMac with three user account on it (local), another iMac that we just bought and my MacBook Pro with my admin account on it (Snow Leopard). So all have Snow Leopard.
What would be the best way to move the three local accounts AND their home folders to the server?
What would be the best way to make my portable user account into a mobile user account on the server?
I am planning to create all users on the server (with the same username and passwords etc.) then move the local home folders from the iMac to the server through some direct wired connection. My concern is with this move - will there be permissions mismatch issue? I am sure there will be as the UID would be different for the same accounts (pre-existing and newly created, eventhough their username and passwords are the same).
Any best practices? strategies?
Does Apple have any documentation on this specific topic? - that is moving local user accounts and their corresponding home folders onto the server?
Thanks much!
Kenneth

Hi again,
I haven't gotten round to it - but may have an alternative route in the mean time: the brand new 27" iMac just arrived, and rather than doing a full 'migration assistant' setup, I am going to try the following:
1. on the new iMac: only create a local Admin account, user name totally unrelated with any other account name;
2. on the server: settle all the network user account settings, portable home directories, managed preferences etc. for each user;
3. on another computer: log on under the corresponding local user account, and copy one's home folder entirely to an external drive - do not use this machine again under this user account;
4. on the new iMac: log in as a network user, make sure the home folder and library syncing works as desired, set some preferences (and check that this gets synced to the server drive); copy the parts of the home folder & library for this user from the external drive - wait until it all gets synced back and forth - and check any permissions, preferences whatever issue (the local account on the other computer is available for cross-checking, just don't change any documents or settings on that one)
5. if all works well on the new iMac: delete this local user account on the other computer.
6. repeat steps 3-5 for each other computer where this user has a local account (one 'old' iMac, one 13" MB) - will also allow to check and filter any duplicate documents which have accumulated over the different machines.
7. create the network accounts for this user on the other computers, and check the syncing etc.
8. repeat for each user (4 in total for us).
I think this might just work, since the new iMac at present has no accounts - so no possible issues with similar account names & passwords etc - and you keep the 'old' local account on the other machine as a safeguard anyway.
Any particular thoughts or comments on this proposed process??
How about permissions: does the copying to an external disk, and then back onto another computers disk solve that??

Alternatives or Solutions to Mobile Home Folders

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