Home directories on a network drive

im upgrading an os 10.3 server to os 10.4. The original setup was previously upgraded from an old mac manager installation. I am having a serious problem regarding home folders. On the old system, the users home folder was stored on a snapserver(a network drive connected by ethernet).
For starters, i cant even get the osx server recongise the snapserver as a share? is there issues with using network drives?

Well, the network drive needs to support AFP 3 for home directories, and I know of none that do. Unlike with Mac Manager, there's no separate AFP login - one account cannot be used to mount every user's "home." Further, any server that will be acting as the home directory server needs to be joined to the same directory system as the server that's hosting the shared Open Directory domain.
If your network drive supports NFS, you can mount it on your server and reshare it via AFP. That's the easiest way to overcome the problem and reuse your existing drive.

Similar Messages

Use thinkvantage access connections to map a network drive

Is it possible to use thinkvantage access connections to map a network drive. I have three different basic sites (home, work1, work2) with network drives that I would like to access depending on the site.
1) I wonder if it is possible to configure thinkvantage access connections to automatically map the network resources through a connection profile?
2) I wonder if it is possible to configure thinkvantage access connections to automatically map the network resources through a connection profile that is based on vpn connection?
thanks in advance
sincerely, anders

Hi,
directly it's not possible for Access Connection to reconfigure your network drives.
However, there is one really cool part of Access Connection, that might be realy suitable for your situation. This part is the script/application, that can be executed when a profile gets applied.
So for your situation I can imagine, that you create a .bat file, that contains something like this:
net use * /DELETE /YES
net use Z: \\computer name\share name
The first part will delete all maped drives. The second part will establish connection that you want to use. Of course you can multiply the last part, so that you can configure multiple connections.
Please let me know, if this helps.
Cheers

Final Cut Pro with Network Home Directories

Hi,
I have been tasked with setting up a Mac network primarily for use with FCP. The main requirement is that the user profiles are roaming as users will move from desk to desk, it is a college.
I have an Xserve with OS X server and Open Directory configured. I have configured the network home directories and have successfully logged in with different users.
My questions is regarding Final Cut. What is the best way to configure Final Cut to reduce the amount of network traffic?
I have redirected the users cache folder to the local Mac and configured the scratch disc to a local hard drive. Are there any of tips that someone with a similar setup can recommend?
Thanks

Most schools end up using ext HDs. Each student has their own firewire HD with All the fcp capture, scratch etc docs on it.
Thats the only way to meet the demands of video production and retain portability

Need Help setting up "Network Home Directories" or Something Similar

Alright so, I am sure the answer to my question exists but I have no idea what i am looking for as far as syntax is concerned. I have taken over as tech at a full mac School and have not touched a mac before in my life. I will try my best to give a detailed description without an entire life story.
My school has 10.4 on laptops which we run a script on to bind to a directory allowing them to access accounts created on our server. That part works fine. The problem we are having is syncing or saving any files/changes to these networked accounts. The accounts seem to have home directories created, i went through workgroup manager and set up login/out and background syncs, and nothing seems to work(Copy/save). This year it would have been nice to have the syncing feature since all student/teacher laptops would go back and forth from home and work. However next year will change a bit since we will keep all student laptops here and the teachers will still take them home. We also have desktops of course which do not move and will be accessed by the students.
I need to find a way for students to log into the server to access their account and have it automatically pop up displaying their own files/folder on any machine they access since they wont always be at the same machine. considering there will be upwards of 100 students accessing each machine, local syncing for this would not be a good idea. My best guess would be setting up network home directories so they can log into and work directly from the server and have nothing but the original OS installed on their local machine.
As far as the teachers go, Since they have one laptop the entire year and take them home the syncing method would be the best. That way they can come here, turn on their laptop, automatically sync as they log in, and save everything when they log out (or every so many minutes since some of them close it and just run home). I tried doing this with a student account but could not get it to work. My other problem with this is that the teacher laptops are 10.5 and I have no clue how to bind them to the directory since I was not the one who created the original script which is something i would like to reverse engineer to my standards since it has some nice little things in it I just wish to tweak.
A short recap of what i need:
1) Network based accounts with network home directories, nothing locally saved
2) Network Based accounts with Portable Home Directories, Syncing between local and server files
3) Bind 10.5 machines to server
4) Program to read and edit a script.
I somewhat know the terminology for PHDs and MHDs and have read a bit about those but still cannot get them to work, but I am extremely frustrated with my lack of terminology for NHDs (If that is what they would even be called) and have had a hard time finding any information on how to set them up. The only thing i found was stating that if the server goes down, so do the accounts. Which isnt a problem since we have multiple servers as well as last ditch local accounts for students to just access the computers.
As far as i know, our servers are running LDAPv3 w/ OD, maybe even not with OD, I really don't know. If anyone can give me any help with this it would be much appreciated. If you need any additional information let me know and I will try my best to get it to you. I may even be willing to wipe everything and start fresh if it is required since these havent been used much in over 2 years, only for drive mounting storage.

I received some information on another forum, however I am still stuck.
So i rebound a laptop to the server via Directory Access, created a new account using Workgroup Manager, set the Home Point in WGM for the Account to a specified folder on the server's raid and no luck.
The account authenticates with the server, but it saves everything locally and ignores the NHD. Anyone with any ideas?

Unable to use network home directories on a 2nd volume

Hi,
I am having a problem hosting network home directories on 10.4.4 server. Through the help of AFP 548's instructions I have had them working fine when the users folder is at /users however I would like the data stored on another hard drive for easy backups, etc. But when I set this up I just get the unable to connect due to an error message on the client machines.
I have tried setting up another folder on the boot volume and that works fine so I think the settings I am inputting are correct but as soon as I select a folder off the boot drive I run into problems again.
Any ideas?

Any ideas?
Yes, but it might also be helpful to know specifically what error message your users are getting when they try to log in.
If you've correctly set up your share point and network mount record as criss describes but you're still having problems, it may be due to the length of the path to the user's home folder. For more information on that point, see KnowledgeBase article number 107695.
One question: can your users find their home directories when they log in to the server using Go > Connect to Server in the Finder?
David Walton

Portable Home Directories, FileSyncAgent, and Case-sensitive drives

I have a 10.5.3 Server machine that is serving (via NFS) home directories to a mixed group of Leopard (10.5.3) and Linux clients. The drive containing user home directories is formatted to be case-sensitive. I also use Portable Home Directories and mobile accounts on all the Leopard clients. Many of the client machines have case-insensitive drives.
FileSyncAgent is dying on the client machines with a lot of "Reverification failed" messasges in ~/Library/Logs/FileSyncAgent.log. The files being verified often have mixed case file names, while the error messages show lower case file names.
Anyone else seeing FileSyncAgent dying on every home sync?

Hi Guys, So far I have found what seems to be a fix for this issue. I was also having the issue happen to me around some iphoto file but that seems to be coincidental. I will detail what I did below but please first backup the mobile account on the local machine as you will need to recreate it.
Backup the local mobile home folder
Log into a admin account and delete the mobile account under the Accounts Pane in System Prefs
Log into the users Network account on the notebook
Delete all the following items
~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices
~/Library/Mirrors
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.syncservices.*
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.filesync.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.homesync.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.syndication.plist
~/Library/Preferences/Syndication
Logout of the Network account and then back in
Recreate the Mobile Account
From this point on I have not seen any issues with the FileSyncAgent crashing. Omit any of the files listed above that do not exist. I generally have the notebooks sync on login and logout and I forced a sync while logged in to make sure everything was okay and so far so good. Hope this helps.

ITunes library keeps disappearing with network home directories&MacBookPro

I've been using iTunes with network home directories for years. My wife & I have network home directories on our Macs and we can log into any of our Macs with our network home directories. The actual iTunes Music folder is also on the network server and shared between our user accounts.
This has always worked fine with my G4 cube, my PowerMac G5 and my PowerBook. As long as I only open iTunes on one machine at a time, I can open it on any of my machines and everything works great.
However, with my new MacBook Pro, my library keeps disappearing and I have to reimport it from the XML file every couple of days. Seems to erase my iPod Shuffle too at the same time (maybe it's triggered by plugging in my iPod).
Any ideas? Is there an endian issue with the library?
I can't figure out how to get any feedback on what's happening. Is there a debug log file I can enable?
PowerMac G5, PowerBook, MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I've got one better...I imported all my CDs onto iTunes. Then I upgraded. Here is what happened...All songs remained listed, however when I would click onto a song, a ! mark appears in front of the check mark and a window pops up saying "song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" Well this occurred on 75% of my songs. Apple info led me to believe I could use my iPod as a hard drive. So I tried hooking up the pod to my computer. Well, from 3688 songs, I was down to just over 200, so I guess that is an even higher percentage.
What iTunes did was made a folder in "my music" with years 1955 to 2007. In those different years folders are the CDs that were released in that year. They have to be opened, each individual song, and re entered to itunes. All this I discovered on my own. No help from Apple. Not to mention what a royal pain in the *** process, which I am still in the process of doing. And don't even get me started with Artwork

FontExplorer + Network Home Directories = font amnesia

I'm a humble (tho ambitious) graphic design instructor trying to get network home directories working in my 30-seat design lab. At the beginning of January I migrated all workstations to a freshly built 10.4.4 universal image and updated (actually re-installed) my server and took it to 10.4.4.
In my testing of network home directories everything is working perfectly accept our font manager. (Even Word is playing nice thanks to a tip I found here!)
We started with FontAgent (cause we own 30 licenses), but quickly found that to be not very well adapted to a network home environment. (I did get the official work-around shell scripts from Insider Software, and those looked to be an easily broken kluge that only solve half the problem.)
So again following Gerrit's tips from here, I tried the latest version of FontExplorer which is supposed to support network home directories-- and it runs! (Unlike FontAgent.)
...but it has an incurable case of amnesia. In other words, as users move around from machine to machine, session to session, and day to day it always forgets all their fonts-- even though the actual font files always remain accessible in the same place.
Upon investigation, I can see that FontExplorer is actually doing something very similar to the FontAgent shell scripts. That is, whenever FontExplorer is launched in a NHD environment it creates a new "FontDatabase.db" file in a directory on the local drive:
Users/Shared/Linotype/FontExplorer X/{UserShortName}_{UserNumericID}/
and creates a symbolic back to the file's customary location in the user's networked Library:
/Application Support/Linotype/FontExplorer X/
The amnesia part comes in because I haven't found a way to get FontExplorer to start with-- or keep-- an already configured "FontDatabase.db" file. It constantly seems to be resetting itself with each login.
Does anyone have wisodm or suggestions on how to make FontExplorer remember its fonts?
Does anyone have any tips for getting any font manger to be totally functional in a network home environment?
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Excellent tips, and thank you - they're very helpful for all involved!
I see that you're using NFS (and its behavior makes sense), but this might make your life a little easier if you were to use AFP for home directories again:
1. If you have an automounted network Library (/Network/Library), that would be perfect for housing a "starter set" of Font Explorer preferences and your initial, preconfigured database file, in this way.
Create a folder in your automounted network Library and name it something like FEInitialData. Set the permissions such that your users can only read (root:admin 775 would be good). Now your clients all see the FEInitialData folder in /Network/Library/FEInitialData.
Locate these files from an appropriately configured local user account: com.linotype.FontExplorer.plist and the ~/Library/Application Support/Linotype/FontExplorer X folder (that contains the FontDatabase.db file).
Place a copy of the com.linotype.FontExplorer.plist file in the FEInitialData folder in your network Library. (To clients, this appears as /Network/Library/FEInitialData/com.linotype.FontExplorer.plist.)
Use Disk Utility to create a new disk image from the local ~/Library/Application Support/Linotype folder. Make sure that the image is a read/write image, and name it something like FESupport.dmg. Then place that resulting disk image in the network Library, so that to clients, this appears as /Network/Library/FEInitialData/FESupport.dmg.
2. Utilize an AppleScript app as a login item to perform the following listed actions at login time. You'll have to either distribute the login app to each computer (e.g. in their respective Applications folders), or place it in the automounted Library (or automounted Applications, etc.) like /Network/Library/LoginScript.app. You'll also have to define the script as a login item for your users. You can do that at the group level in Workgroup Manager once you have the LoginScript.app in the same relative place on each client.
Be sure also to remove FontExplorer X itself as a login item, since it needs to be quit while we're preparing files for it!
Listed Actions to be done by LoginScript.app:
1. If no ~/Library/Preferences/com.linotype.FontExplorer.plist file exists, copy it from /Network/Library/FEInitialData.
2. If no ~/FESupport.dmg file exists, copy it from /Network/Library/FEInitialData.
3. Mount the FESupport.dmg file to a local filesystem path, so that its contents appear to reside in a local folder. (For this script, I'll use /tmp.)
4. Ensure that a ~/Library/Application Support/Linotype folder exists and contains a symbolic link named "Font Explorer X" which points to the mounted disk image's contents.
5. Launch Font Explorer. (Upon initial launch, the metadata caches should be recreated.)
-----LoginScript.app---
(*See if the preference file and FESupport disk image are in the right places. If not, copy them there.*)
try
do shell script "ls ~/Library/Preferences | grep 'com.linotype'"
on error
--The com.linotype.FontExplorer.plist file is missing.
do shell script "cp /Network/Library/FEInitialData/com.linotype.FontExplorer.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.linotype.FontExplorer.plist"
end try
try
do shell script "ls ~ | grep 'FESupport.dmg'"
on error
--The disk image is missing.
do shell script "cp /Network/Library/FEInitialData/FESupport.dmg ~/FESupport.dmg"
end try
(*Create the mount point for the FESupport.dmg file*)
try
--Delete the mount point in case we're not the first login and to ensure that we have an empty folder owned by this user.
do shell script "rm -rf /tmp/FEMountPoint"
end try
try
--Create the mount point
try
do shell script "mkdir /tmp/FEMountPoint"
end try
(*Ensure that we have a symbolic link to the mount point*)
try
--Remove any existing links just to be safe.
do shell script "rm -rf \"~/Library/Application Support/Linotype\""
end try
try
--Create new symbolic links.
do shell script "mkdir \"~/Library/Application Support/Linotype\""
do shell script "ln -s \"/tmp/FEMountPoint/FontExplorer X\" \"~/Library/Application Support/Linotype/FontExplorer X\""
(*Mount the ~/FESupport.dmg file to /tmp/FEMountPoint*)
do shell script "hdiutil attach ~/FESupport.dmg -mountpoint /tmp/FEMountPoint"
(*Open FontExplorer*)
do shell script "open \"/Applications/Linotype FontExplorer X.app\""
---End Script---
I might have messed up some of the syntax, so consider this a working example. Hope it helps!
And, yes, if you need consulting, you can find my contact info at consultants.apple.com/consultant by searching for AuburnMac.
--Gerrit

Drobo Elite & Network Home Directories

I purchased a Drobo Elite to host my network home directories after being sold on the awesomeness of their "Beyond RAID" technology and assured that it is an ideal device to host user profiles. Unfortunately, once I have more than 20 users connected at a time, the network comes to a crawl. The maximum number of users I support is the same as the Open Directory Master supported before the Drobo was installed, however the login times and functionality preformed substantially better when the Users folder was hosted on a single local drive on the Xserve.
After enabling jumbo frames on the iSCSI NIC between the Xserve and the Drobo Elite, DataRobotics tech support informed that no Drobo unit is designed to host profiles directly so I'm at a loss as to what I should use it for.
Considering the situation is it better to just ditto copy the Drobo directory to the /Users on the Xserve, enable PHDs on the frequently logged in users, or shop for a sub $2000 solution?

This would likely increase your network bandwidth, not decrease it.
Since /tmp will be periodically deleted, any data cached by an application is going to get deleted, forcing it to go back out to the network to reload the content, an degrading performance for everyone.
I would look elsewhere for data that's free to remove, as well as engage the users for help ("Please throw away anything you no longer need", or maybe "please move data you no longer need to this other archive volume").
Also check who's using what. Very often you'll find a small percentage of users are using a disproportionately large amount of space. Focussing on those users will get you your best result in the shortest time.
At the end of the day, though, it may just be that you need more space.

Unable To See Network Drive from outside Home Network..even when using DynDNS

Hi
I have just got a Freecom Media storage Network Center which I have attached to my WRT150N router.
I am attemting to permit access to authorised users to files on the drive via the internet (presumably via ftp).
Here is what I have done:
Swiitched on DynDNS on the web admin page in the router (used DynDNS.com free service.
Obtained a user addess which is middle-earth.dyndns-home.com from DynDNS, which is linked to my Virgin Media IP
Switched on Port Range forwarding with
Ports 20-21 as ftp
Port 80 as http
Port 57 as DNS
Selected "both protocols"
Set the IP address to route to 192.168.1.42 - (this is the IP address which the web based software for the Network Drive reports as.
However the configuration of the TCP/IP protocol in PC attached by LAN cable to the router is "Obtain an IP address automatically" (i.e. dynamic?). If I change these settings and specify static IP addresses   will I not muck up internet connection to Virgin Media.
what I was hoping to acheive was typing     ftp:// middle-earth.dyndns-home.com
in the address bar would let me see the network drive from anywhere!
I have tried using DNS pinging on Ports 20, and 21 but that tells my ports are closed. i have also tried switching off my software firewall (Kaspersky) and the router firewall, but this does nothing.
What have I done wrong or no done!!
Thanks

I think the problem is solved.
The Freecom device needs to use a different part of its interface to be assigned a static IP address, which I have now done. At my last try it was visible from two independent views outside of my network.
On another front, I am appalled at Linksys or Cisco, who are not prepared to advice on getting more from their produicts if they are 'out of warranty'. The online chat tech said I could ring an 0871 premium line number in the UK. When I rang that, I was told as tthat as my unit is not faulty and was out of warranty I would have to use their pay per incident service.
That is not a way to deal with customers. When it comes to upgrading or replacing network equipment, I will look to a provider who is interested in their customers.

Folder Redirection not working on SMB Network Home Directories

I've setup network home directories on a 10.7.3 server. NHDs are available via SMB currently. I'm trying to setup folder redirection via MCXRedirector for both the ~/Library/Cache folder and ~/Downloads and redirect them to the local client. Client is 10.7.3 joined to OD. I'm using Login Redirection and the option to delete the existing folder and create a symlink. I used these instructions to create the redirectors: http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=MCXRedirector
When NHDs are available via SMB, the folders are created on the local client, but the symlinks aren't created in the NHD. I can switch the NHDs to be available via AFP, and then it works fine. I can switch back to SMB and the symlink stays in place and appears to work with no issue.
Am I missing something here? I can't find any documentation that says I can't use MCXRedirector with SMB shares, and I see a number of posts where it appears that people are using it successfully... so I'm not sure what is wrong? Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

Hi James,
For folder redirection issues, we can go to Windows Logs\Application in Event Viewer to check if some related error events were logged. Besides, we can also run cmd command
gpresult/v or gpresult/z to collect group policy result to check if something goes wrong.
Regarding how to configure folder redirection, in my opinion, the following article provides a good guide.
Configuring Folder Redirection
http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc786749.aspx
Best regards,
Frank Shen

Linux users cannot open Firefox on multiple systems that are mounting the same network drive as their home directory

I am supporting a user who is logging into multiple linux systems that all have the same /home directory mounted to a network filer.
When the user opens firefox on one system, he is unable to open firefox on other systems.
I'm assuming this is because firefox is storing his profile in /home.
These are Centos 5.4 x64 systems, authenticatiing to a Windows 2003 Domain. The filer that hosts the home directories is a NetApp with both CIFS and NFS permissions enabled on the volume that /home resides. We are using the version that came with the Centos installation, 3.0.12

So while this worked well for my computer at home, it does not work for the actual computer the disk is mounted on. If I try to mount the disk as the "office" user, the computer rejects the connection to itself and tells me to access it locally. Any ideas on how to handle this? Thanks again.
dlr

Users on network home directories hang after sleep

Hi,
I have the following problem: I have a 10.5 server with network home directories. I can login from Snow Leopard (10.6.1) however whenever the machine goes to sleep and comes back from sleep, the user hangs then if you wait a bit then it will come with the message that the share has been disconnected and it asks you to manually unmount. It will stay there forever. When you click disconnect, the system will unmount and remount the home directory but in the mean time, Mail will have reported disk i/o errors in the logs and throw errors (ranging from type in your password to 'rebuild index').
Going through the log files (and verbosity high) it seems that when going to sleep, the system doesn't unmount the network home directory. After it wakes up from sleep it attempts to unmount the home directory share which off course fails because it's in use and then it locks up, after you click disconnect, it says "spins reported" in the logs and goes on with remounting the shares.
The issue doesn't happen if the user is local. If anybody has an idea as to how this works or if they have it working, please let me know. I have tried just about anything. AFP shares, NFS shares, I have tried with or without the intr, nolocks, locallocks mount options - they all have the same issue. I have even tried another Mac Mini with a fresh install of Snow Leopard.

I found a possible cause and solution.
This has been on 10.6.1 with Mac Mini's. Then we got a new Mac Pro with 10.6 out of the (Apple) factory which I updated to 10.6.1, same issue. What I didn't think about is that by default I install a heap of software (including XCode, Adobe CS4 and Office 2008) with customized packages and workgroup manager preferences.
So I was mucking around with Cocktail (the tool to clean up caches etc.) and I noticed Snow Leopard hung every time after cleaning & recreating some caches. Now that I had a reliable way to hang Snow Leopard I investigated what could cause it.
I noticed during a PackageMaker session that Adobe CS4 installs a Version Cue startup script in /etc/machinit_peruser.d. I deleted it, rebooted, used Cocktail again and it went all the way through without hanging. Rebooted again, according to the logs it pre-linked & cached the kernel and several kernel extensions and that was it, no more hangs, no more issues logging in after sleep or screensaver.
So possible causes:
- VersionCue installs itself as a kernel module or something (the location says "mach" which is the kernel after all) which is not compatible with Snow Leopard.
- The caches and kernel extensions were 'dirty' out of the box but VersionCue (or something else that interacts with it) blocked my or Snow Leopard's automated attempts to clean them.
- VersionCue reinitializes (it sits on the network after all) after a sleep or screen saver timeout in a way that gives issues with Snow Leopard

You are unable to log in...; Network Home directories; 10.4 & 10.5 Servers

I have a solution!
Note: this is a new post because all previous posts dealing with this topic have been archived, MANY without an answer.
Problem:
Users with Network Home directories can't log in. After entering their correct username and password, the following error message appears:
"You are unable to login to the user account 'username' at this time. Logging in to the account failed because an error occurred."
Problem occurs with v10.5 Leopard client attempting to login to a Network Home directory hosted on a v10.4 Tiger server.
_Significant Troubleshooting Symptom:_
Client mac Console log (all Messages) contains the following entry at the time the user attempted to login to their Network Home directory:
authorizationhost[509] ERROR | -[HomeDirMounter
mountNetworkHomeWithURL:attributes:dir:Path:username:] |
PremountHomeDirectoryWith Authentication( url=afp://server.example.com/Homes, homedir=
/Network/Servers/server.example.com/Volumes/ServerHardDisk/Homes/username,
name=username )
returned 2
_Computing/Network Environment:_
v10.5 Leopard server doing: DNS; Open Directory with Kerberos for Single Sign-On; AFP for half of all users' Network Home directories.
v10.4 Tiger server doing: AFP for the other half of the Network Home directories. Also, note that Open Directory is not running on this server, BUT IT IS CONFIGURED (using Server Admin) as "Connected to a Directory System" and has joined the Kerberos realm on the v10.5 Leopard server.
v10.5 Leopard clients.
Solution:
v10.5 User Management manual
http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/User_Managementv10.5.pdf
says share points for Network Home directories have to have Guest Access ENABLED. See step 5 on page 117 and step 12 on page 118. Note that these are two different settings, but seem consistent with each other.
I had followed/complied/set Guest Access according to steps 5 (page 117) and 12 (page 118) on BOTH the v10.5 Leopard AND the v10.4 Tiger servers. The solution that allows users to log on normally is:
Uncheck/disable Guest Access (as set in step 12 page 118) for the v10.4 Leopard server only. Leave "Share this item using AFP" checked. Uncheck "Allow AFP guest access."
The above worked for me. Your milage may vary. If anyone knows how to report this to Apple for fixing in the server software and/or clarification in User Management manual, please do. If anyone knows that this solution "breaks" other stuff, please post back.

Other posts that dealt with this same issue and other potential solutions:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5700241&#5700241
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5784186&#5784186
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1215039&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9204496&#9204496
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1522353&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10226660&#10226660

Network Home Directories for all users

Hi,
I hope someone can shed some light on a possible issue.
I work for a primary school in the UK.
I have Tiger server 10.4.10 running as an Open Directory Master. I have a 1TB XRAID attached to this server where the Home Directories are hosted. I have been told that they are now slow at logging in (I am currently unwell at home so have not confirmed this yet).
It used to be a magic triangle setup but found there were problems with the managed prefs for the clients not being obtained on startup and network logins not working.
The DNS and DHCP comes from the AD still.
The OD has been set up to have the same kerberos realm as that of the AD (is this wrong) as the users are in both AD and OD with same username and password.
The users Home dirs for the OD are hosted as i say on the XRAID which has a striped array of 1TB so the HDD speed shouldn't be a problem.
The server is now connected to a 1Gb switch as are the clients.
I have added more ram to the Xserve (now running on 5GB RAM). I have read that an afp server needs a lot of ram to work effectively. Is this enough?
I have not set up link aggregation yet.
The total amount of users logging in at one time will be no more than 40 users at once as there are only 40 mac machines in the school.
I hope you can help as i would like to have something to go back to school with to tackle this if it does turn out to be true.
Any more info needed just ask.
TIA

Hi. Let me restate so I understand it right. You are using an XServe to host network home folders and also using Active Directory for authentication? I work at a primary school also and we have an XServe that has the users home folder on it, but we also connect to an AD server for authentication. We had some speed issue with logging in but as soon as we set up a time server to ensure that both the XServe and AD server had the same time the trouble was fixed. Hope this helps.

Home directories on a network drive

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