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.

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Network home folders, collaboration sharepoint and Microsoft Word 2008

I'm hoping someone who knows how Microsoft Word 2008 works on network volumes can shed some light on our situation.
We run a small managed network with about 15 leopard clients and a leopard server. We've got two sharepoints, a "homes" share for network home folders, and an "Office" share with our shared office document folders.
Several times a week, users will encounter a situation where Microsoft Word 2008 will claim that a file is open by another user, or that the file can be opened in "read only" mode, even though the file is not in use. Naturally, the problem cannot be replicated when I am present.
### My Hypothesis ###
My users are in the habit of quickly borrowing machines from other users to pull up documents in the "office" share by using the "connect as" button. So, for example, userA is logged in to her machine (and is thus connected to the network home folder on the server). userB comes along and borrows her machine -- without logging out, will connect to the shared office folder, pull up and edit/print a document, etc. We're not currently auto mounting the office share.
I know that Microsoft Word creates lock folders located in the .TemporaryItems folder at the root level of the "office" share. The folders are named "folder.xxxx", where xxxx is the userid of the account that created the lock folder. Everyone uses a network account, so everyone has a unique userID. If I list the .TemporaryItems folder using the CLI, i can see lock folders that are several days or a week old. So Word doesn't seem to be cleaning up after itself immediately, at least not always.
So my question: when userB connects to the office share on a borrowed machine (logged in to the client machine using the network home folder of userA), is it possible that word will now create lock folders for userB, and will be unable to clean up lock folders created by userA?
Anyone have other ideas for investigating the "file in use" problem?

Switched user back to the network home folder and adjusted the MS Word preferences so that the autorecovery files would be stored on the local client machine. There doesn't seem to be a comparable setting in the Excel preferences.
My initial testing suggests that this has reduced how often this problem occurs, but has not eliminated it. I tested by repeatedly opening and closing a couple of different word files in rapid succession -- i was able to replicate the "file opens as read only" problem occasionally.
I've talked to Apple server support about this issue. While they were helpful, they didn't have an explanation or solution for this problem. There are a number of postings in the microsoft mactopia discussion boards site where people report similar problems.

Network home folders owned by (unknown) user.

I am seeing something strange happening and i will try and describe it as best as i can.
This is happening in a middle school with about 750 users, 150 emacs(10.3.9) and 1 xserve(10.4.?).
I am not sure if this is a capacity issue but it seems to happen when there are lots of users trying to log into the computers. There are several different work groups the students can choose from when they log in and at any one time there may be 60 to 100 users logged in with network home folders and 1 or 2 other auto mounting share points.
Occasionally a few users will not be able to log in. A closer look will show that they are able to get passed the login screen and choose a workgroup and actually log into a desktop environment but they are not able to access their home folder. If you try and access anything in their home folder you will get an error msg informing you that you do not have sufficient access privilages. Of course the documents folder that normally sits on the dock is displayed as a question mark, and trying to launch any application will fail as it cant access the prefs file stored in the users library folder in their network home folder.
There are a couple different scenarios i have observed when looking at the permission information on the home folders.
Scenario one: when i look at the permissions on the home folder using get info tool, the owner is a completely different user. Doing an ls -sl from the command line shows the same information.
Scenario two: when i look at the permissions on the home folder using the get info tool the owner is (unknown). Doing an ls -al from the command line will show the owner as being a number. I assume this is a uid number, and the number is usually a uid that does not show up in workgroup managers current list of users, and i assume this is why the get info tool reports the owner as being (unknown).
I can fix the home folder by using a chown -r but dont know why this is happening to begin with.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions.
I have done some research on google but have not come up with anything concrete.
Help
Mark
SD34

This is not a definitive answer, but you are certainly pushing the capabilities of a single XServe. As best I understand it, the XServe is really meant to be part of a deployment of OS X server in an environment such as yours. You should really have at least one replica server for authentication purposes and a separate device, such as an XServe RAID, or at least another server to house network home folders. You should at least consider getting another box, even a dual G5 or Mac pro, make it a replica, and split the home dirs between the new box and the XServe. Think about it. You have a lot of users authenticating a buncg of shares and at the same time a bunch of users zipping all sorts of big and little dats files (like office or appleworks files) as well as all the web browser chache files and whatever other cache files are flying around. That's an awful lot for the XServe's network connection, nevermind the read/writes on the HD.
So honestly, it would be really tough to tell if there;s just a bottleneck causing issues, or some other software/configuration error with that much traffic to a single server.
And this is in no way meant to be a lecture - I learned a lot by trying a similar feat on my network

I work at an english university and I have set our Mac users to use network home folders, but Firefox keeps hanging when it is quit.

Mac OSX 10.6.8 active directory network home folders

Switched user back to the network home folder and adjusted the MS Word preferences so that the autorecovery files would be stored on the local client machine. There doesn't seem to be a comparable setting in the Excel preferences.
My initial testing suggests that this has reduced how often this problem occurs, but has not eliminated it. I tested by repeatedly opening and closing a couple of different word files in rapid succession -- i was able to replicate the "file opens as read only" problem occasionally.
I've talked to Apple server support about this issue. While they were helpful, they didn't have an explanation or solution for this problem. There are a number of postings in the microsoft mactopia discussion boards site where people report similar problems.

Network Home Folders on NAS

hello all-
i have recently purchased a QNAP TS809U-RP. i want to move all my network home folders to it. here are the steps i have taken thus far:
1) created a new share on the QNAP via the QNAP web utility. the share is xServeData
2) created a folder called "Home" in the xServeData - this is where i want all the home folders to reside
3) went to Server Admin and created a new share for the "xServeData" share i created in the QNAP web utility
4) went to Workgroup Manager and created a test user called, oddly enough, "Test"
5) clicked the "Create Home Folder" for that user
when i look on the QNAP a Home folder is created called "Test" but with only 2 folders inside of it:
Library
Sites
when i go to one of the iMacs on the network i type the username and p/w for the user "Test" and the login starts but i get the error:
"You are unable to log in to the user account "Test" at this time
Logging in to the account failed because an error occurred."
when i go back and check the new "xServeData" share's permissions versus the permissions where the home folders currently reside (on Drive 2 in Bay 2 on the xServe) i see that the permissions are:
serveradmin, Allow, Read & Write, This folder
staff, Allow, Read & Write, This folder
others, Allow, Read Only, This Folder
on the new "xServeData" share these permissions are:
serveradmin, Allow, Read & Write, This folder
staff, Allow, NO ACCESS, This folder
others, Allow, NO ACCESS, This Folder
when i try and change the new share to match the old share and save it just reverts back to the "NO ACCESS" for staff and others. i am sure this is probably what is causing the user "Test" from logging in but i don't know how to solve the issue. i am new to NAS's and am certainly not the most advanced OS X Server user. i have this in my home and my users are my family. this is really more of a hobby but i love to learn and play with this stuff.
if someone has any experience setting up Network Home Folders on a NAS and hopefully on a QNAP NAS i would sure appreciate your help and knowledge to resolve this. it seems that i am very close but that i am just overlooking one or two issues......

I am in the same boat. I would like to create mobile accounts but never sync. This is like having a local account but this way the password is in sycn with OD. Then the Time Machine can do the backups to the home folder on the NAS instead of using home synching.
How do we get the NAS box folders available to WGM? I need to know what to enter in the home folder section and be able to hit create home now and save.
This will be using Snow Leopard 10.6 od master.
Lannie

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?

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.

Storing network home folders on a NAS

I'm wanting to set up a NAS to hold and serve AFP home folders to clients over the network. I'm figuring that doing this will improve performance on the network as clients can access the home folders directly from the NAS while the server is spending its time attending to other tasks.
On page 126 of the User Management PDF, it describes setting up home folders spread across several servers. It requires making the shares automountable (as described on page 128 of the same document).
Unfortunately, it only refers to AFP servers running OS X server. I'm wanting to use an AFP serving NAS. I figure one way would be to mount the NAS drive on the server and then share it, but wouldn't be surprised if that resulted in data flowing over the network to the server, then out again to the client – not very efficient.
Is there any documentation for a way of hosting network home folders on a NAS? This will be using Snow Leopard server.

Thanks for your comment. I had a read of the other post, and it sounds like the other people were wanting to do close to the same as me. The issue I do see with that method is the NAS becomes an external drive to the server. I was hoping for it to mount directly to the client computers.
I suspect the iSCSI setup would result in home folder data being transferred from the NAS to the server and then to the clients, resulting in a doubling of network traffic. In that situation, using it as a FW drive may work better.

Newbee question on network home folders

I have 3 or 4 networked Macs in my home and I want everyone to have access to their own home folder from any Mac. Therefore the necessity for networked home folders. But I know nothing about how to set them up or even if it is possible in this situation. I have a copy of Mac OS X 10.5 server but have not set it up yet. Some Macs are a mix of 10.4 and 10.5.
How do I go about learning how to set this up? What are PHD (portable home directories)? How does mail work in a network home directory environment? All family members are on .mac mail.
Thank you for your help in getting this set up in my home.

A Network Home folder is simply where your Home Directory is stored on the Server rather than locally on you Mac.
The experience of using the Mac does not change so Mail and all other applications behave as they do with a normal local home. As you say this allows you to log in from any Mac. but before you set this up it is advisable to make all of your Macs identical, e.g make sure they all have the same Application, fonts, plugins etc because it is only the files that are normally in HD > Users > yourhomefolder
that are stored on the server, everything else stays local.
As for setting it up http://www.afp548.com/ has some good guides for Tiger server that can be adapted for Leopard
Portable home directories are similar in that the Home Directory is stored on the server, but a PHD syncs the directory to your local mac as well, so in theory this is the best of both worlds in that you work on a local home folder and everytime you log in and out your changes are sync'd back to the server.
This still allows you to log in from another Mac, and also means you can work on a laptop away from your network.
But like I said "in Theory" this is best of both worlds, and for the majority of the time it works well, but you can run into complications, such as errors syncing and the potential to loose work if you log into the account on two macs at the same time.

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

Network Home Folders - Sometimes

Is there a way to have network home folders sometimes?
Here is the situation. (all servers and clients are at 10.3.9, but could be upgraded to 10.4.x)
In a school there is a 29 unit eMac lab and an iBook cart. The students each have a home folder on the server. When they log in to an eMac they use their OD/LDAP username and password. The OSX server authenticates them and then they use their network home folder. This works just fine.
But when they use the iBooks, they are using Airport to connect to the network. Network home folders are too slow to work over a wireless network, so they have to log in using a local account and then mount their network home folder to save files.
What I would like to do is have them login to the iBooks with their OD/LDAP information so that they can be authenticated using OD/LDAP but not use home folders when using the iBooks. (I could then put their home folders in the dock)
Is this possible?
Thanks
too many to list Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Considered, but won't work for this application.
The students use different computers at different
times. For instance the question is about users on
eMacs some of the time and iBooks some of the time.
So they would have at least 2 different computers and
many people might use either of them at a different
time. So a single computer could have many, many home
folders.
Just to press the issue: is there a reason this is a problem (disk space, for example, or security)? Because the whole point of PHDs is that you'll be getting synchronization even when multiple machines are involved. If you're worried about home directories piling up, you could implement a cron job to clean them. I'm not trying to suggest that PHDs really will work in your instance--just trying to suggest possibilities.
In any event, it IS possible to modify your users' home directory settings on a client-by-client basis. You could, for example, have your users' accounts set to use network home folders for your wired machines, but override that setting on your iBooks to point to homes on the client. To do that:
1. Open Directory Access on your iBook, select your LDAPv3 configuration, and edit it (Services pane > LDAPv3 > Configure, select it in the next window and click Edit. If you've checked "Use DHCP-supplied LDAP Server" you'll need to uncheck that and create a configuration for your server; consult the server documentation for more information.
2. When you click the Edit button, you'll get a window for the selected configuration, with tabs for "Connection" and "Search & Mappings." Click the Search & Mappings tab.
3. In the Record Types and Attributes pane on the left, click the disclosure triangle next to Users, and do two things:
- Select "HomeDirectory" and delete it.
- Select "NFSHomeDirectory" in the left pane, and replace the corresponding "homeDirectory" entry in the right pane with the following: #/Users/$uid$. Then, click OK to save your changes.
4. Reboot the client, and log in as one of your network users. Here's what should happen: on this particular client, Directory Access will still log your users in with the account settings on the server, except the HomeDirectory attribute will be reset with the value /Users/<short user name>. That's what the NFSHomeDirectory line does: the sharp sign tells Directory Access to ignore the attribute in the user's server account, and overwrite it with the string that follows. The $uid$ tells Directory Access to substitute the field with that value (the LDAP uid field). So, for user John Smith, whose short name is smithj, the client will create a folder called smithj in the folder /Users, which is on the local client.
You could in theory use this technique to place the home folders anywhere on your client (like in /tmp), but it's best to use the default /Users folder unless you have strong reasons not to.
The advantage of this scheme is that you only set up the Directory Access preferences this way on the clients where you want to have local homes--e.g., your iBooks. Once you've correctly configured the Directory Access preferences and have verified that everything works, you can copy the folder /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService to your other iBook clients, so you don't have to go through this process on every machine.
There is one caveat, however. Configuring Directory Access this way will effect ANY user who logs in to your iBook--that is, any network user on your server. You can't set this up differently for different sets of users on your server--for any client workstation, all users on the server get treated the same. This is presumably what you want, given that you don't want to server network homes over wireless, but it's important to understand the implications of what you're doing.
The instructions above assume that you're familiar with setting up configurations in Directory Access. If not, you might want to read up on it.
Power Macintosh G5 1.8/PowerBook G4 15 1.42 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Slow Firefox Start up when using network home folders on OS X server, Would like to speed it up

So firefox crawls when starting up using network home folders. I'm wondering if there is a way to keep the caches local and only save personal settings to the home folder located on the server.

upgrade your browser to Firefox 8 and try
* getfirefox.com

Changing location of Network Home Folders

Hi
We're about to add two 500GB mirrored drives to our Xserve in place of the two 250GB drives we have already. This means re-locating user's network home folders to a new sharepoint.
Is this simply a case of setting up the new home sharepoints, moving the homes to the shares and allocating the appropriate new home share path in the user's home folder setting? I tried a test user and the only thing that didn't work was the shortcuts in the sidebar, which can be replaced.
Any pointers welcome, thanks

I've never tried this, but you may be able to use Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html) and backup everything to a USB/Firewire drive. Then put in your 500GB drives and restore the backup to the new drives. You then wouldn't have to create new sharepoints, everything would still be the same, just with more storage. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this though....

InDesign CS1 Unexpectedly quitting with Network Home Folders

Hi
We have a Mac OSX 10.4 Server installation running on a G5 XServe with 5 Mac Users running Network Home Folders as well as other services. When the Mac users are working off the server with their files, InDesign unexpextedly quits or when they try to save their work back to the server it reports that they don't have access gto the sharepoint to save their files.
Any ideas?
Paul

Paul,
We have had similar problems with CS1 and CS2, the only fix i have found is when the user cannot save, is to use the connect to server dialogue and to reconnect to the share point that way, in most cases the user can save after doing this. I have also seen this when the user is close to their disk quotas limit (some adobe programs need something like 2/12 times the file size to be able to save properly). For some reason it seems that CS will regularly lose its connection to the server, and i checked the Adobe site once and i am sure it said it was not supported in a network environment. It is certainly the worst program we have for problems since i have set up network home folders for students, second is Microsoft Orifice which also does the same thing.
Hope this is some help, its been driving me and the students mad for the last year.
Good luck,
Kevin.

Syncing problem with network home folders

Deaar Community,
I recently obtained a Mac Mini Server. I had a problem syncing my iPhone after moving all my data to network home folders.
Everytime I got the following message:
"Syncing cannot be enabled on this computer"
"Multiple computers are logged in to this same network home folder."
"Please turn off syncing on all other computers..."
There were no other computers syncing into the same directory.
This turned out to be a wrong error message.
I solved the problem by turing off the firewall on the server.
That was strange. Although the firewall rules were set to allow all traffic within the local zone iTunes had a problem with its presence.

Please be also sure that the permissions for the files are set correctly. In my case it turned out that the permissions for the iTunes Library were set in a way that the directories were owned by the server administrator's account. I had to reset the owner.
I also feel that there is a bug in the permissions administration in snow leopard server. I ended up with files that had a lot of permissions entries which were completely identical.
i. e.
Angela read only
Steve read+write
Steve read+write
Steve read+write
everyone none
Stll, a different error occurs randomly, but I finally managed to completely sync the iPhone. The error message now says that the iPhone could not be synced because the sync server could not sync the iphone. (?! This is somewhat redundant.)

Mobile Network Home Folders and Leopard

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