Duplicate portable user entries in NetInfo

Question

Hello,
Hopefully someone can help me out here! I'm running a 10.4.11 server with multiple portable accounts, with laptops and desktops running a mix of 10.4.9-11's. I am unable to log into the machines sometimes on some of the portable accounts (who have already been logged into these particular machines -- that is, their home folders/etc should already have been created).
On further inspection I notice that in the Accounts prefpane on the machine there are duplicates and often triplicates of the same user, and also obviously in the NetInfo manager's /users section I find these same duplications. I have been able to fix the problem by logging into another user account or local admin account and deleting all three entries for the account in question so the next time they attempt to log in it sets up the NetInfo piece locally, but this is sometimes only temporary. Has anyone had any experience with this issue and know if there is something I can be doing wrong? It seems to happen randomly on different accounts and machines, and in two of the sites I manage. I want to think it's not server related, since one of the sites is still running 10.3 server and one is 10.4, but the clients all happen to be 10.4.x.
Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize for the massive wall of text!
Thanks!

Answer 1

I have this problem chronically in one lab of g5 towers. Here is a script I have hammered out so far. All this has to be run by root so I am thinking I may set it up as a system cronjob. I wish I knew why these of all the 1200 machines I manage get this account duplication bologna.
everything below this
#!/bin/bash
duplicate=`nicl . -list /users | sort +2 | uniq -d -s 12 |awk 'NR < 2' | awk '{print $2}'`
while [ $duplicate ]; do ### Here we test to see if we have a duplicate and then enter the looop if we do
echo deleting $duplicate
nicl . -delete `nicl . -list /users | sort +2 | uniq -s 12 -d |awk 'NR < 2' | awk '{print $1}'` ### here we delete the duplicate
echo $duplicate deleted
duplicate=`nicl . -list /users | sort +2 | uniq -d -s 12 |awk 'NR < 1' | awk '{print $2}'` ### here we feed the variable if there is multiple duplicates
done
echo done
##everything above this
Message was edited by: Benjamin Nasse
Message was edited by: Benjamin Nasse