Can't create portable home directory

I recently changed a user's login in Active Directory (she changed her last name.) I changed her local home folder on her Mac to her new login, ran chown on the folder to update her home directory ownership to the new login name and everything was fine. She could log in and access her account using her new login. However, she now gets the message "Can't create portable home directory" when logging in. Nobody else on the machine gets that message. I understand what it's telling me, but I don't know where to look to fix it.

see how many occurrences her shortname has in netinfo and delete the second one. There is a conflict on the local machine w/ her userid and shortname or try removing the first acct and let it rebuild her new user acct on the local machine.

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Portable Home Directory - no prompt to create

Not excactly sure how to explain this since I am new to MAC. We are using Kanaka 1.2 on our Macbooks and getting our user settings from Workgroup manager on our Xserve. Everything looks correct but I am not getting the prompt to create the portable home directory when 2 of my users login. These 2 users had previously logged in and when they got the "create portable home directory" message, NEVER was selected. I have deleted their accounts in \library\managed preferences. I'm not sure where else to look.
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I had a similar problem and found this article helpful.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060103033920526
It worked like a charm and I had the tech guy call me later and ask how I fixed it!

Never - Create a portable home directory on this computer now?

I have kinda the opposite problem from normal. I have Home Directories and PHD's working fine. I think it is working as expected, with one exception...
My Daughter has an iMac at my office. I set up her account as PHD so she could also use the account from home. (We SOMETIMES go home <g>) But when I log on as her from one of the other desktops at the office, I get the dialog: "Create a portable home directory on this computer now?". I answer never. And it keeps coming up. Does Never not mean Never?
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PB G4 Al (2), MDD G4 Dual (3), AGP, Cube, W2K Server, B&W G3 Server & others (includes SE30)

Hello,
I started a thread concerning the opposite phenomenon, when you once click "Never" it seems you cannot change your mind and get the question asked again ... maybe you could contribute to answer the question ?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1375953&#1375953
Brett_X said: Most of the PHD stuff happens at the client level anyway
I guess the settings preventing the dialog from coming up are stored on the client machine ?
Thank You.

Using Portable Home Directory a a backup tool ?

Hi all,
we're still figuring out if a server will be a delight or too much of a bother for our environment (5 people, Powerbooks and MacbookPro only, Airport Extreme only, lots of work being done outside the office).
Anyway, of many resolved questions, one still remains to be answered:
Could we setup a Portable Home Directory to mirror the home folder automatically and in the background ?
In other words: I come back to my table, flip open the computer and don't even realize the sync being done in the background.
The idea is to have a kind of safety net (the mirrored home folder) as a kind of up-to-date backup.
Or would it defeat the purpose of the Portable Home Directory (meaning we have no idea what it really is ... ?
Thanks a lot in advance,
chris
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Ah, OK, I somehow suspected that.
So in our case (Desktop computer = Mobile computer =
One and the same machine) it wouldn't make it any
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the server and have a backup run on that mirror than
setting up a "normal" backup routine on the mobile
computer itself ?
Actually there can still be a fairly significant benefit, and it's the primary reason I use PHDs at my law office. (Like yours, ours is a small network of fewer than 10 machines, and they're all desktop Macs.)
Having any machine go down is a major wrench in the works. So, we have a "spare" Mac that I keep up to date with our basic configuration and an administrator account. If one of my staff machines goes down, I quickly swap in the spare Mac, have the affected user log in to it, and confirm that we want to create a PHD on the spare. A few minutes later the sync is complete and, other than having to reset a few things like dock, sidebar and login items, my user is back in business. That user can happily use the spare Mac with her full home environment until the affected Mac can either be repaired or replaced. When we're ready to put the spare Mac back into its standby mode, I simply delete the staff member's PHD from it and it's ready to be pressed into service again.
I've been through this process twice since we migrated to Tiger server, and have found it to be a much faster path back to productivity than having to restore from a backup. (Although, as I said earlier, PHDs are not a backup solution and we use several Retrospect routines for that purpose.)

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I'm wondering if anyone is actually having success with Portable Home Directory functionality in Leopard. I have mostly all Intel Macs... 3 iMacs, MacBook Pro, 2 MacPros... and 3 PPC G5's. The server is one of the PPC G5's. The server and all clients are 10.5.3.
I've just had no luck over the course of this week getting PHD to function as advertised. It seems simple enough... and everything appears to go off without a hitch until you actually attempt to go mobile. Even then, on the surface it seems to be working then you quickly realize that it's not actually syncing. It only successfully syncs when the local home directory is initially created (first user login). After that, any changes you make go to the server... but they don't come down when you move to another computer.
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Well I've found some consistency in the dysfunction, but I don't understand it. Still no sync at login, even if I turn off management server side and set it user side. It does sync at logout, although it has stopped re-upsyncing everything all over again each time (don't know why that suddenly stopped, but I'm glad it did).
So here's the test. Logout of users normal computer, it syncs on logout. Go to another computer with a scansnap... Login, no sync, do a manual sync... it goes thru the motions... checking, but doesn't actually sync anything. Scan document, logout, it syncs. Go back to normal computer, login... no sync, do a manual sync... goes thru the motions... checking, doesn't sync (scanned document still not there). Check home folder on server, scanned document is, in fact, there. Logout, it syncs and actually does something. Immediately log back in, no sync, but document is there.
So the consistency is that the home folder sync workflow seems to be working. However, for some reason, it won't sync at login or manually while logged in. I'm at a loss.

Remove menuitem portable home directory

I played around with the settings for creating portable home directories. Then i decided for some users not to use them and use network homes in stead.
However the menubar stil shows the "two houses"-item (grayed out).
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Thx

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Portable home directory syncing sometimes cannot complete, and stuck at "Checking "~/"". Looking at Console message shows the following:
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Under "All Messages" and "Console Message" nothing shows around that time.
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Also, on the server's console message, the corresponding greeting does show up even when the client doesn't receive it. The clients forward/reverse DNS works fine on server and client.
The problem happens to ALL the clients, which lead me to think it must be a setting error on my end rather than a bug. But I can't figure out what.
Please help..

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Portable Home Directory (PHD) not being created for new users

Creating users in the Workgroup Manager also created their home directories at the time I created it when we were using Leopard 10.5 server.
But now that it is upgraded to 10.6 server, it doesn't do anything when I create a new user and tell it to "Create Home Now".
Any idea how to fix this?

Assuming that the server is properly configured (most importantly DNS) try running sudo createhomedir -a
and see what that does. In my experience, clicking the create home now button doesn't always work.
See here for more info on this command.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21050?viewlocale=en_US
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Portable Home Directory no longer works on Lion bound to Active DirectoryAD

Hi, All,
I look after about 30 MacBook Air/Pro connected to a predominantly Windows corporate network.
A few months back, I installed a MacOS Server running OpenDirectory and Software Update Services for managing the MacBooks - they are configured in the standard "magic triangle" configuration, bound both to the Active Directory (running on a handfull of Windows 2003-R2 servers) and OpenDirectory; they are configured to use the Mac Server for Software Updates, and with Portable Home Directories replicated on a network share point (through AFP) to keep a backup of the user's data.
When all the MacBooks were running Snow Leopard, everything was running fine... but the last couple of laptops purchased came with Lion and they cannot synchronise their PHD's anymore :-(
I have spent a lot of time trying to pin-point the problem, including replicating a whole test-network with its own AD/OD and client Snow-Leopard/Lion laptops to try various configurations... my conclusions so far are that:
1- using Snow Leopard clients, it just works
2- using a Lion client, when the network user account is configured in the default Users O.U. on Active Directory, it just works
3- using a Lion client, when the network user account is configured in another O.U. than Users (e.g. Company-Name or External-Contractors), then the PHD syncinc doesn't work at all
4- the failure symptoms are a popup window when trying to do a manual sync saying that "your network home at (null) does not allow writing" - if automatic syncing is configured through MCX, it just fails silently
5- when PHD syncing fails, I can log on using the network account, manually mount the share point used for the network home in the Finder and read and write to it without a problem; so it' not a permission problem, but the fact that the network home directory is (null)
6- I have traced the root cause to the FileSyncAgent process which raises an exception at startup - here's what I see as the salient lines from the logfile (i've edited out the username):
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] ******************************************************************************
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] FileSyncAgent-502.2 (r?, BUILT:?, PID:385, OS:11D50b, ARCH:x86_64-64) starting
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] LA: FileSyncAgent -launchedByLaunchd -iDiskPlist
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] ******************************************************************************
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] Engineering log verbosity level = 1
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] Registered isRunning port with name 'com.apple.FileSyncAgent.iDisk.isRunning'
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.846] Temporary disk storage at "/Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Caches/Cleanup At Startup/FileSyncAgent-1727909307".
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.846] UserAgentString = "DotMacKit-like, File-Sync-Direct/502.2.? (11D50b x86_64-64)"
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:03.249] +[SSyncSet_PHD createPHDSyncSetForLocalPath:remoteHomeSpec:mountSuffixPath:name:]: Creating Sync Set with name "HomeSync_Mirror".
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:03.249] -[SSyncSet_PHD _setupNewPHDSyncSetWithLocalPath:homeSpec:mountSuffixPath:]: We've been given local home path '/Users/[USERNAME]'.
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:03.249] -[SSyncSet_PHD _setupNewPHDSyncSetWithLocalPath:homeSpec:mountSuffixPath:]: local home at "/Users/[USERNAME]"
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:06.458] Added new sync set "HomeSync_Mirror".
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:06.465] _incomingIPC: SFCreatePHDSyncSetMsgId (17) took 3.217627 seconds.
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:06.526] Scheduling next sync of "HomeSync_Mirror" at 2012-02-07 12:45:16 +0000
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.122] ==========================================================
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.123] Starting automatic sync of "HomeSync_Mirror".
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.126] Peer "local" reports changes since last sync.
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] EXCEPTION: NilPtr <-[SPeer_FS_PHD mountPeerVolume] (Peer-FS-PHD.m:142): "'((homePath))' is nil">
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] BACKTRACE: {
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x105003493
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x104f70866
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x104f6fabd
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x104f6ecb4
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x7fff924bb74e
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x7fff924bb6c6
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x7fff901998bf
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x7fff9019cb75
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] }
7- if I use the same user account from a Snow-Leopard client, the mountPeerVolume finds the remote home_dir, mounts it and happilly trawls through the two directories to figure out what needs to be copied; I get something along the lines of:
0:: [12/02/08 18:44:15.344] Starting manual sync of "HomeSync_Mirror".
1:: [12/02/08 18:44:15.363] -[SPeer_FS_PHD mountPeerVolume]: We've been given remote home path "/Volumes/[USERNAME]".
1:: [12/02/08 18:44:15.363] -[SPeer_FS_PHD mountPeerVolume]: Remote home path exists.
1:: [12/02/08 18:44:15.363] -[SPeer_FS_PHD mountPeerVolume]: Final path to PHD remote home root = "/Volumes[USERNAME]"
8- if I use a Lion client and a user account configured in the Users O.U. on Active Directory, it works similarly well
9- in the failing use-case, if I run a "dscl xxx -read /Users/xxx" to verify that the DirectoryServices deamon returns some information, all looks good: I get all my A.D. user details, including email config and network home_directory, the MCX payload, etc
10- the only difference that I can see when running dscl between the "working use-case" and the "failing use-case" is that the Attribute for the network home directory is called HomeDirectory (working) or OriginalHomeDirectory (failing) - but the actual value is present and correct in both cases
11- I have enabled SMB as well as AFP file sharing to ensure that it's not a protocol problem rather than the share point itself that causes problem - no difference
12- I have upgraded the MacOS Server to 10.7.3 (from 10.7.2) - no difference
13- I have upgraded the Lion client from 10.7.2 to 10.7.3 - no difference
14- I have tried to manually configure the Directory Search path on the Lion client to map HomeDirectory to OriginalHomeDirectory - either the mapping didn't work or it's not the real cause of the problem, as again: no difference.
15- I have contacted AppleCare, raised a case with all the details above, been escalated from level 1 to 2 and 3 - and basically have been told that customers have reported very similar problems & that no more detail is available to me as it is a Directory Services related problem - if I want to take it further with Apple, I need Enterprise OS Support (and hence $1000s per year - and no real guarantee of result)
[thanks to anyone who's read until now]...
So my questions are (as I can't believe that I'm the only one using "proper O.U.'s" for managing users in Active Directory):
- has anyone experienced this before?
- does someone know of a workaround (other than "stick to SnowLeo" or "redesign your whole A.D."!)?
- can someone help me figure out where the FileSyncAgent process tries to get its remote home directory from - as this might point to a solution?
Many thanks

I was able to fix the issue here. Steps Taken: From the comand line I ran
dscl /Search read /Users/jdoe HomeDirectory
It returned # No such key: HomeDirectory
This was the big clue.... it should have returned
HomeDirectory: <home_dir><url>afp://files.hihllc.lan/Users/jdoe</url><path>/</path></home_dir>
I unbound the Mac from AD and ran the following command in terminal.
dscacheutil -flushcache
I then went into OS X sharing preferences and renamed the computer slightly, so it would create a new computer record in AD. I rebound the machine to AD making sure in Directory Utility Advanced, under User Experience that Force local home directory on start up disk was unchecked and Network protocol to be used was AFP.
I then ran
dscl /Search read /Users/jdoe HomeDirectory
and it returned
HomeDirectory: <home_dir><url>afp://files.hihllc.lan/Users/jdoe</url><path>/</path></home_dir>
I had the user reboot... which was necessary. When he logged in HomeSync fired up. He had quite a few conflicts, so I told him to select use files on this computer for all conflicts.
I checked the FileSyncAgent.logs and it was good.
Let me know if this fixes your issue.
Thanks,
Ray

Can't create portable home directory

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