How do you troubleshoot launch agents?

Question

I work for an educational instution and have been tasked with writing a process that will map all of a users networkshares/homeshares when they login to their Mac's. One big sticking point we've had in the past is that all our shares are DFS based. What this meant for 10.6 is that instead of mapping things using the DFS path, we had to use the actual servername of where those shares were hosted. Because 10.7.4 now supports DFS there is a big push to start having an automated process handle this.
I've learned a lot from the process, but one of my problems is the launch agent.
So here is what I have currently:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
            <key>Label</key>
            <string>com.domain.mapdrive.windowsshares</string>
            <key>ProgramArguments</key>
            <array>
                        <string>/bin/sh</string>
                        <string>-c</string>
                        <string>/bin/mkdir /Volumes/netlogon; /sbin/mount -o nobrowse -t smbfs //domain.edu/netlogon /Volumes/netlogon</string>
            </array>
            <key>RunAtLoad</key>
            <true/>
</dict>
</plist>
Currently in terminal when I type the above commands it works fine:
/bin/mkdir /Volumes/netlogon
/sbin/mount -o nobrowse -t smbfs //domain.edu/netlogon /Volumes/netlogon
However, when I try to run the same command via the launch agent I get the following in Console at login:
com.domain.mapdrive.windowsshares: mount_smbfs: server rejected the connection: Authentication error
com.apple.launchd.peruser.2126486968: (com.domain.mapdrive.windowsshares[2876]) Exited with code: 77
I looked at the perms a bit and they were oginally:
computer:LaunchAgents user$ ls -l /Users/user/Library/LaunchAgents/com.domain.mapdrive.windowsshares.plist
-rw-------  1 user  Domain\Domain Users  252 Jul 16 11:02 /Users/user/Library/LaunchAgents/com.domain.mapdrive.windowsshares.plist
It looks fine in the sense that the user owners the file. I tried modifying the perms a bit to be more like a script
computer:LaunchAgents user$ /bin/chmod 755
But still got the same error in terminal. My best guess is that the launch agent isnt running in the user's context, but I'm trying to figure out how to find what context it is running under to confirm or deny that. Any help?

Answer 1

Why so testy? Luckily for you, I'm a forgiving fellow. I will give it one last try and then leave you alone.
You have a fundamental problem here. In order to access these shared resources, your users must authenticate. Windows authentication is designed to work with Active Directory. If your network isn't doing that, then you need to take it up with your IT department.
If your Active Directory isn't working properly, you can roll your own solution in any number of ways, but the users are always going to have to authenticate. You would have to use something like NFS to avoid that.
I suggest looking at your environment in both your normal login session and comparing that to the launchd environment. They are always different.
Here are a couple of support articles that may give you some pointers:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4794
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2083/_index.html