Augmented Home Folders anyone?

We've been using Augmented Home Folders fairly successfully for over a year now. There are some caveats but on the whole it seems to work really well and keeps users SMB home folders clear.
However I seem to have hit a stumbling block. Previously we were binding the stations into AD and OD and the boxes "Force local home directory on startup disk" and "Use UNC path from Active Directory to derive network home location" were both checked in Directory Utility. This was almost perfect because it provided the augmented home folder and also the SMB home folder as a mount. However, with this setup users had no access to the /Users folder but this only affected minor things like iTunes authorisation (we're a school and this isn't really an issue). Unfortunately the new version of the SMART board tools places files inside /Users/Shared and won't run if the user cannot access them. So now I've unchecked both those boxes which provides the augmented home folder AND access to the /Users folder (although I now have to mount the SMB home folder with a script instead).
This also brings issues though. It seems to be the cause of the problem that I wrote about here http://www.afp548.com/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=25308 where MCX preferences are only partially applied (particularly mail account settings). I can confirm that if both of these boxes are checked then all MCX settings are applied properly but if they are unchecked settings are only partially applied. This is true on 10.5.x and 10.6.x as well.
So, I seem to be stuck with either no access to the /Users folder which will prevent certain applications running or MCX preferences not being applied properly. Is anyone else using augmented home folders? Has anyone else experienced similar issues?

Hi,
>>My predecessor set user home folders to NAS device not even in the domain but I couldn`t find the source of it it.
We can try to use Group Policy Preferences Drive Maps extension to delete the drive letter by choosing
Delete action in the drive mapping item, or we can choose Replace
action to delete and recreate mapped drives for users.
Drive Maps Extension
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731729.aspx
Configure a Mapped Drive Item
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770902.aspx
Best regards,
Frank Shen

Similar Messages

Mac Home Folders on Windows File Sever with AD

I know this is a pretty popular discussion and if there is a place that does this I might just not be able to find it. Here is the scenerio.
We have 26 macs bound to both AD and to OD. We have a OD Mac server that is set up in a Magic Triangle setup. Right now the only way we could get the network home folders to work is to place them on the OD mac server and then create Augmented users (from AD) and manually add the properties via Inspector for the Home Folder. So earch semester I have to create about 75 users accounts for all the students. I am wanting to use the AD plugin to use the UNC path in AD's profile page to host the home folders on our windows servers. Is there any way to do this without extending the AD schema. All I care about not creating the 75 augmented users every semester. I am happy to manage preferences for the machines via workgroup manager all I want is the Network Home Folders to be on the Windows server. Can anyone provide any guidance? I would be very appreciative.

Just to clarify we create the Augmented Users in Workgroup Manager but the Users are from AD

How to set up Open Directory Users with local home folders?

Hi folks,
i set up a Mac mini Server with the services DNS, DHCP, AFP and OpenDirectory running. Everything is working fine so far but i want my OpenDirectory Users to have their home folders locally on the clients harddisk. My Leopard clients are already bound to the directory but everytime i try to login the login window is shaking even when i use the Directory Administrator account. What am i doing wrong?
Thanks.

(Did you read my other reply? You need to make it a portable account for the caching of login credentials.)
With network homes and portable account enabled on a machine you always run from the locally stored homefolder on that machine.
This homefolder syncs with the server network home folder for that account.
If either of these folders get corrupt or unintentionally altered files (permission problems) somehow, there is risk of losing files, syncing problems and more (can take long time to sync at login/out, during even without corruption - I prefer gigabit cable to WiFi for this for obvious reasons).
You at least need to monitor storage space in both places. You don't want either to fill up the disk (worse on server because several users can have their folders corrupted at the same time). Working quota settings / account is probably a good thing.
And you probably need to decide what is synced : all folders or just some (and when / how often).
You either do this form the server (you decide) or let the user have some say or a mix of these two.
You might want to leave out the user's personal files (music, movies and such) and also depending on emaIl client used, maybe not sync email if the client saves it like Entourage does it, in big ever changing database files. Might be better to just backup the mailserver if IMAP based.
If a user puts other large files in their homefolder (often on the Desktop) they can fill up the server fast. DVD-projects anyone?
Mixing different versions server/client might not work too good either.
So having said that, when syncing works it can be really good and you can restore a machine/account fast with pretty recent data. You can if in a hurry even log in from another machine using the account network home folder, getting access to the synced folders/files.
Using Time Machine it's a one way "sync" (more like "duplicate changed and new files" - which I like) and you have to manually set TM settings on the client for what is going to be backed up and when. I do atleast don't know how to do it from/on the server. This "less intervention by the server" can be a good thing but if your users don't "behave" you might want to be in the drivers seat "saving them from themselves".
TM backups can grow fast and probably demands more user interaction when storage space is used up.
As with all "backup" configurations you probably want some rotating media backup of both network homes and/or TM backups so you can do a restore. Of these two, network homes are the more important one to backup "further".

Active Directory Authentication, AFP Home Folders in the wrong place!

Hi,
I've had this problem off and on... that is, it comes and goes, so I'm not really able to effectively troubleshoot it. My setup is this:
-Xserve G5, Mac OS X Server 10.4.7
-OD Master bound to AD for authentication
-Hosts AFP and SMB shares, all stored on Xserve RAID
On the RAID, I have a folder called Users (/Volumes/XserveRAID/Users) that is shared via AFP. The system Users folder (/Users) is not shared. In fact, nothing at all on the root drive is shared. All share points are on /Volumes/XserveRAID/. All Mac users' home directory profiles are pointed to \\servername\Users\username (in Active Directory Users and Computers application on our domain controller). Their home directories mount automatically when they log into their client machines (also bound to AD).
The problem is this; at seemingly random times, a user's home folder will all of a sudden be created in /Users on the server, and it will not use the /Volumes/XserveRAID/Users/ folder. I will clean out /Users every now and again, but the errant home folders show back up. The only folder that should be in /Users is the local admin.
Since /Users is not even shared, how is it doing this? Why is it that sometimes the /Volumes/XserveRAID/Users share is used (I know this because there are users' files in their folders in the proper place) and sometimes it's going to /Users? Any ideas? Thanks in advance!!
Going slightly mad,
Jason

Hi there,
Just wanted to share my make-due solution.
I have setup the automount sharepoint at "/Data/Home".
When I logged in or tried to use createhomedir in terminal, nothing happened but users could login (even though there was no home folder on the sharepoint for them).
I have created the Home Folders manually "/Data/Home/username" and then logged in again. When I did this it created two folders in the home dir:
-Desktop
-Library
The other icons related to the home dir on the Dock remain big "?" 's.
So I manually added them and assigned them the propper rights.
Now users can log in without any problems, network home folders are working.
So essentially I got thing s to work, luckily I have only a hand full of Mac Users, Imagine having a user base in the hundreds !
Thinking about this really makes me want to know how I can fix this problem, I have a make shift solution but this really isn't the way to go. When I use the createhomedir command, it says "creating homedir on servername.domain.net" and it seems to be busy for like 20 - 30 secs, but after that nothing has changed.
I've checked all possible locations on the server (i thought maybe it might have made local accounts on server by accident, but it didn't.)
If anyone has ANY idea, please share.
Thx!!
Have a nice day

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.

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

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.

10.5.6 Update Breaks Time Machine backup of FileVault home folders?

Time machine used to backup FileVault home folders when I logged out. After 10.5.6, it just logs out and does not do the backup.
Anyone else?
s

This is a copy of a post that I have here somewhere...
"Personally I think apple is up to something...."
My set up was almost since Leopard was out.. Airport Extreme, USB drive connected to it.. 3 profiles on a macbook mid 07, 4 g's ram.. TM would back up will I was logged in every hour or so.. and whenever I logged out it would back up my home folder since I had file vault enabled.. never had a mayor problem.. updated to 10.5.6 about a day after it was out.. TM still backed up while I was logged in but it stopped backing up my home folder that had file vault enabled.. I decided to try a clean back up with another USB drive that I had used for the same purpose and it would not even recognize the format of the drive.. Any ways.. today I got a brand new 500 g's time capsule.. guess what... same thing.. it wont back up my home folder.. I've been with support on the phone since the beginning of the problem spoke to 4 different people 2 different levels, finally one level higher (3rd) the guy told me he couldn't help me because the set up i had was not supported by apple.. today I got to that 3rd level and the guy had no idea.. he even or actually most of them sounded surprise when i told them that i was expecting TM to back up when i was logged off.. .. well he is supposedly going to fwd my issue to their engineers and he or some one else would call me back in around a week becuase of the holly days..
SSooooo , I would say, lets not hold our breath..
"They would have to be r*e*t*a*r*d*e*d to forget something like this"

Steps to upgrade and move server and home folders to new box

Hi All,
Can anyone outline the steps I should take to move my 1200 users from a G4 PowerMac Server 10.4.11 to an Intel Mac 10.5.6 and move home folders to a new drive on the new box? Can it be as simple as using the migration tool and connecting up the firewire cable? And what about the fact that the IP will need to be the same?
Many thanks for any hints,
...Tom

Unfortunately, it is not as simple as using the Migration Assistant.
Please refer to the following guide from Apple:
http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/docs/Upgradingand_Migrating_v10.5_2ndEd.pdf
You are migrating from 10.4 to 10.5, so read that section carefully. There are still quirks in the 2nd edition of this guide, where it tells you to do extra stuff, but it won't hurt.
If you have another IP address available, use that in combination with a temporary hostname until everything is setup. Afterwards, turn down the old server and use the changeip command on the new server.
Schedule your migration to a long window of opportunity when the least amount of people are going to need it - like Friday evening (then take Monday off).

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.

Users home folders not accessible on SMB, OS X 10.6.4

Hello,
I'm facing this very weird problem upon trying to connect my Windows XP SP3 clients to their respective home folders on Mac OS X Server 10.6.4.
The other shares and public folders however work just fine.
So, upon connecting to the home folder of the user from Windows, (on \\serverIP\username\ ) I keep getting the authentication login form as if I'm typing the wrong username or password.
Of course the user's password is correct.
Oddly enough I can connect and see all the users shares if I go on My Computer and type \\serverIP\ and then enter username and password. I can access the "Users" share and even see other users documents and files!
It used to work very well before a server restart last night, I decided to update to 10.6.4 to see if the problem would go away but no luck.
In the SMB service log I see the following everytime I try to connect directly to the users home folders:
[2010/06/23 14:29:14, 0, pid=2834] /SourceCache/samba/samba-235.4/samba/source/smbd/service.c:makeconnectionsnum(1047)
'/Network/Servers/macmini-server.solinf.org/Users/silvia' does not exist or permission denied when connecting to [silvia] Error was Host is down
What puzzles me is that if I navigate from shell to /Network/Servers/macmini-server.solinf.org/ I find an alias called "users" that I cannot access.
Anyone has any ideas what is causing this direct access to fail?
Thanks in advance
CS8

HI,
If you have ClickToFlash installed, that could be a factor.
Also, follow the instructions here to clear the Flash cache.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11672709&#11672709
Carolyn

Moving home folders of existing users

Small office, 4 users so manual file moves or individual user settings updates arent a problem.
My question is, how do I go about moving the home directories of our users from one hard drive to another? My thought is just copy their existing home folders to the new location. Make the new location an automount and a home folder location. Then go into WGM and change each users home folder to the new location. Is this going to work? Anyone foresee any issues? Has anyone done anything like this?

Just wanted to post the outcome of this for posterity. Here are the steps I took.
1. Copy off the user home folders
2. Unmount and unshare the user folders
3. Create the raid array
4. Copy all the user data to the raid array
5. Set up the shares and automounts, setting the userdata folder to automount for home folders
6. In WGM, making sure the url for the home folders was appropriate. Since the new sharepoint name matched the original sharepoint name for me, I didnt need to do anything.
7. Updated the ACLs for each user. These were all erased during copy.
Thats it, users were able to log in again. However, one unexpected thing is that iCal shared calendars stopped working. Users are seeing an error when they log in saying their shared calendars are not online. I dont even know how to go about fixing this. I made sure permissions were correct on the shared calendar folders...

How to manage local user home folders?

We are using Mac OS X 10.6.8 in a classroom. Hard drive has two partitions, one for OS and apps, the other for student's files. Computers are bind to the Active Directory. Unfortunately, local home folders are on the boot parition. Over a time when apps FCP and Avid are frequently used, the boot partition gets filled with files and finally it's full. With zero kb available, users cannot even login anymore. Manually deleting files by admin is cumbersome and time-consuming task.
I'm looking for a way to keep /Users folder clean. Putting user's home folders to server is not an option, because of latency issues etc. Unfortunately the local home folder is the default saving place when user issues the Save As command. I've tried to tinker with the User Template to lock the Documents folder but apps like Microsoft Word and Final Cut Pro go crazy when they cannot save there.
Forwarding /Users to other partition does not solve the problem, it just moves the problem to another place.
Logout Hook to automatically purging the files could be an solution, but there's always one hapless soul who saves his or hers files to wrong place and loses them. Or maybe a script which looks at the modfication date and deletes old files.
Any ideas?

You need to set the scratch disks in FCP and Avid to fix the problem.
Files coming from word etc, will be so minor that it'll take forever to fill up the HD with that kind of stuff.
If you wanted to move the whole home folder to another place on the system, you need to do so using OS X server. It's called Augmenting Active Directory User Records.
If you don't have an OS X Server, you may be able to change the Users Home directory on each individual computer, but it's going to be pretty cumbersome. Do so in the Accounts pane in the System Preferences.
Once you've changed the User Home folder location, you need to copy the users home folder using rsync in the terminal.
Like this:
rsync -av /Users/*username* /Volumes/*drivename*/*homefolderlocation*/
HTH
-Graham

Can't Log in to home folders - AGAIN!!!

Server has been working for for a while and tonight I suddenly can't access the remote home folders. Usually we can access them via fast user switching but the normal "blue globe" icon isn't there on any of the clients. I figured it may have been a Router issue (see recent post) so I replaced the Router with the working Netgear and still not able.
I've tried to "re-bind" to the server and although I am able to Bind, I am not able to unbind. Directory Access gives me the following message when I try to unbind:
"Could Not Contact Server. Could not contact LDAP server to unbind. Would you like to forcibly remove this configuration?"
This leads me to think there is an issue either Binding or communicating with the Server. It's the same for all clients. This has happened in the pass with various servers, version builds,clients and Routers. In the past the only solution was to rebuild the server. I'm very keen to diagnose this issue this time.
Any help would be great.
MJ

Thank you for the suggestion. My phone had been connected to my wireless network since I got it in January. I replaced my router today and at one point this afternoon, was connected to the new router using WPA-PSK. Both my PC and my MBP are connected to the wireless network right now using the same password that I keep entering in my phone. I tried WPA2 and that didn't make a difference. I have reset the phone network settings, removed the sim card and put it back, rebooted phone, router and computer. I guess I will start from scratch and create a new network again and see if that fixes it.
Can anyone confirm that trying to log in too many times is not a factor? I know if you try to log into your password protected phone 3 times, and get the wrong password, it locks you out for awhile. Gmail locks you out for 2 weeks.

Augmented Home Folders anyone?

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