Lion home directories

Hi all,
A question I hope is quick to answer!
We are upgrading the mac minis here to Lion and everything seems to be working fine (Even on our .local domain shock horror!) just a bit concerned about one thing though. The home directory (\\godric\students$\username) on SNOW LEOPARD is mounted as a "home" directory in the finder however it is not apparent on the Lion install. However the documents part of the lion screenshot below stores itself on the "document" folder in the users home directory so redirection is working.
How can I make the home directory reappear?
Cheers
rcharris

Yes. I went through the typical steps more than a dozen times. The sharepoints that I had created last year when using Snow Leopard work just fine. It is the sharepoint created using Lion that is not working properly. I can manually connect to the share point using the Lion created user with "Connect to Server".

Similar Messages

How to configure Airport Extreme AFP disk sharing to host multiple users' home-directories (Lion, using autofs)

I have this working, but only by completely bypassing access control, using guest access with read+write permissions.
Do I need to buy Lion Server, to do this. All my past unix/linux experience says Lion Server should _not_ be necessary.
This seems like a simple & obvious setup objective, but it is proving to be harder than I would imagine.
Setup:
multiple users, sharing two mac mini's running OSX Lion
connected to an Airport Extreme (4th gen) with a USB disk shared (either via disk password, AEBS password, or using AEBS user's passwords).
After much experimentation and web research, I finally have managed to get the mini's to auto mount the Airport Extreme's AFP shared USB disk. Well almost... It only works if, on the Airport, I set the guest access permissions to read+write and select the "Secure Shared Disks" method to "With disk password" or "with Airport Extreme password". In other words, it only works if I essentially bypass/disable access control by using the guest authentication mechanism to the AFP shared disk.
On the Lion side of this, I am automounting the users directories via "autofs". The config files for this are
/etc/auto_master:
# Automounter master map
+auto_master            # Use directory service
/net                    -hosts          -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home                   auto_home       -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers        -fstab
/-                      -static
/-                      auto_afp
/etc/auto_afp:
# Automounter AFP master map
# https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3336384?start=0&tstart=0
/afp/users -fstype=afp afp://;AUTH=No%20User%[email protected]/Users/
Then, after rebooting and verifying read+write access to the /afp/users directories, I change each user's home directory: In System Preferences > System > Users & Groups, I right-click over the users to access the Advanced Options, changing the Home directory field to point at the AFP-mounted /afp/users/Users/* home directories.
I experimented with alternate UAM specifications, as well as both OSX and AESB users & passwords. Using guest access is the only thing that has worked.
Any pointers would be appreciated...

Based on lots more experimentation which confirms the information in a parallel discussion (cf. Automount share as non ROOT or SYSTEM user! https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3221944), I have concluded that the Lion 10.7.2 implementation of AutoFS mechanism is broken. I submitted a bug report via apple.com/feedback.
Work arounds..?
Earlier I wondered if installing Lion OSX Server was necessary. The more I contemplate this, the more I am convinced it _should_not_ be necessary. The client-server architecture is clear: my mac's are the file-server client's and the Airport Extreme is supposed to act as the file server. The only thing instaling Lion Server would do (besides enriching Apple.com) is enable me to configure one of the mac's as the file server. This would require it to be "always on" (thus enriching my electric utility as wel). Okay, an additional benefit would be configuring software RAID disks attached to the Lion server, but Time Machine has worked fine for me in the past, backing up to disks mounted on the Airport Extreme.
One solution is to create a disk partition for each user and instruct each user to connect / authenticate to the Airport Extreme AFP share at login. The multiplicity of partitions is necessary since the first user to mount the AFP share, takes ownership of it, blocking other users from accessing that disk partition. A user can "steal" ownership by reconnecting, but this will leave the other user's applications & open files dangling.
This disfunctional situation really *****. Before instaling Lion, I put a 64 GB SSD (solid state disk) in each of our mac's. I did this expecting to easily configure the /Users/* data on external networked storage. I'm having a dejavu "Bill Gates"-ware moment; problems like this were why I abandoned Windoz.
I will make a few more experiments using the depreciated /etc/fstab mechanism. Maybe that will bypass the broken-ness of AutoFS...? Alternately, I guess I could also try to run Kerberos authentication to bypass whatever is broken in AutoFS, but that would require a running a Kerberos daemon somewhere. Possibly I could configure a Kerberos service to run on both my mac's (without installing Apple's Lion Server)...?
Stay tuned...

Multiple Home Directories

I have a OD server running 10.5.2 and and 10.5.2 file server that is a member of the OD. I am curious if this is possible:
I'd like local home directories for all of the computers (which i currently have set up in WGM by setting the home dirs to /Users. But what i'd also like is for them to have a network home directory that they can save files to for personal use. Right now i have the share set up so that there is a folder called /Users on the file server and i'd like any folder in there to be able to be mounted by doing afp://server/username
are having both of these at the same time possible?

This was my point. I wanted total separation. In order to create that separation (when trying to use a network user) I had to temporarily move the existing Snow Leopard Users folder (on Partition 1) so that the Partition 2 OS (either Snow leopard or LION) will create it's own User directory structure. This is only needed for network users (i.e. ones that authenticate via OSX server).
Once the process of temporarily moving the Users folder, letting the new instance create it's own directories, and renaming back, everything works. i.e. when I startup Snowleopard all operations are within Partition 1 then if I start LION all operations are within Partition 2.
When installing new versions of an O/S I like to have control and manage the change so that I know I have a totally working system. Been doing the same with Linux for years, but Mac OS/X tries to be a bit too clever!

Why can't files be locked in AFP home directories?

Hello!
Our setup: Lion Server on Mac Pro with 30 Lion clients.
Several applications, notable Eclipse and R Studio, are crashing on start and complaining about not being able to lock files in their working directories. This only happens on network accounts whose home directories are on the server, not local accounts on the clients.
These apps worked fine under Snow Leopard.
I have three questions:
1. I assume this is a more low-level type of locking than the "Locked" checkbox in Get Info: am I right?
2. Could apps running on clients (logged into network accounts) get locks in Snow Leopard?
3. If so, what's changed in Lion, and how can I re-enable locking?
Thanks
Louise
Example error from R Studio:
12 Jun 2012 18:24:23 [rsession-fintannagle] ERROR system error 45 (Operation not supported) [lock-file=/Network/Servers/xgrid.complex.ucl.ac.uk/Volumes/Users/fintannagle/. rstudio-desktop/sdb/s-333EABAB/lock_file]; OCCURRED AT: core::Error core::FileLock::acquire(const core::FilePath&) /Users/rstudio/rstudio/src/cpp/core/FileLock.cpp:117; LOGGED FROM: bool session::source_database::supervisor::<unnamed>::reclaimOrphanedSession(const std::vector<core::FilePath, std::allocator<core::FilePath> >&, core::FilePath*) /Users/rstudio/rstudio/src/cpp/session/SessionSourceDatabaseSupervisor.cpp:249
12 Jun 2012 18:24:23 [rsession-fintannagle] ERROR system error 45 (Operation not supported) [lock-file=/Network/Servers/xgrid.complex.ucl.ac.uk/Volumes/Users/fintannagle/. rstudio-desktop/sdb/s-505698E8/lock_file]; OCCURRED AT: static bool core::FileLock::isLocked(const core::FilePath&) /Users/rstudio/rstudio/src/cpp/core/FileLock.cpp:61; LOGGED FROM: static bool core::FileLock::isLocked(const core::FilePath&) /Users/rstudio/rstudio/src/cpp/core/FileLock.cpp:63
12 Jun 2012 18:24:23 [rsession-fintannagle] ERROR system error 45 (Operation not supported) [lock-file=/Network/Servers/xgrid.complex.ucl.ac.uk/Volumes/Users/fintannagle/. rstudio-desktop/sdb/s-505698E8/lock_file]; OCCURRED AT: core::Error core::FileLock::acquire(const core::FilePath&) /Users/rstudio/rstudio/src/cpp/core/FileLock.cpp:117; LOGGED FROM: bool session::source_database::supervisor::<unnamed>::reclaimOrphanedSession(const std::vector<core::FilePath, std::allocator<core::FilePath> >&, core::FilePath*) /Users/rstudio/rstudio/src/cpp/session/SessionSourceDatabaseSupervisor.cpp:249

User presets and templates will only be placed within the catalog folder after the 'Store presets with catalog' is activated. Existing user presets and templates will remain in their original location. I appreciate that this is a tad confusing, but it's the way Lr works. To get all of your existing presets and templates into the catalog folder it's probably quicker and easier to just copy the entire 'Lightroom Settings' folder from the default location to the Lightroom catalog folder.

Portable Home Directories in 10.8 Server?

I have a Mac mini Server running 10.6.8. Now that 10.8 is out, Apple will probably stop supporting 10.6 (as is their policy) and that means either slowly eroding security or moving to 10.8. I have been looking at the documentation and it seems underneath it all is still by an large the same basic unix-stuff like postfix, dovecot, a dns system, etc. Giving the lack of support for GUI-managing the more complex setups, I'll probably be doing it command-line (stuff like multiple virtual mail domains, multiple web domains, etc.). Not fun (and a business opportunity for some enterprising software engineer).
But what I haven't been able to see in the documentation or anywhere else is Portable Home Directories. In my current setup, I have a 10.6.8 Server and 10.7 clients. On these clients is a single local administrator acocunt and the rest are 'managed mobile accounts'. These are local acocunts. They work when away form the network on which the server is, but when in range of the server, the server may push settings and stuff. And on login/logout and when connected to the LAN and during work, the home directory of the user is constantly synchronized with a copy of the user's home directory on the server. This means my users can take any computer and get their own account and a synchronized copy of their home directory. They can also take a laptop off line for a while and when they return to my LAN (either physically or by VPN), any changes will be synced. This is a sweet setup and it works with 10.7 clients and 10.6.8 server.
But what I haven't been able to find if this will still work with 10.8 Server. I have looked at teh 10.8 Server documentation and haven't found anything about it. Will it still work somehow and if not, is there a good alternative?

Gerben Wierda wrote:
Or: you create the users anew in the network directory, you replace their home directories with the content of what is on the MacBook (TDM is your friend) and do the chmod. Easier still.
That way, I suggest the migration in that way; because, you can test everything out before the data gets moved over. There's nothing like something going wrong in the setup/migration, and you have to do it all over again.
Kirk, you can always put the Home directories/folder on an external. But if you do, you'll probably want to run this command in Terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool YES
That sets the system-wide setting to mount external HDs on startup. The default behavior in OS X, probably around 10.3 onward (but Apple may have flip-flopped on this), is to mount externals on user GUI-login, not on startup like internal HDs. The default behavior is a huge problem with network users, whose home directories reside on the external, since the external on GUI login often mounts "too late" and new "phantom" home directories are created (along with warning messages that the home directory can't be found) and you sometimes get duplicate mount points. In short, the default behavior creates a bit of mess. To spare you some frustration, run that command, which will mount the externals on startup, so the home folders are always available.
It's also handy if you plan on creating other shares on the external; it prevents some flaky behavior.
Gerben's "general description" can be applied to Lion and Mountain Lion, although with Mountain Lion you have fewer tools, and you'll often be working in Server.app rather than some of the older tools like Server Admin.
Again, basically you need to:
(1) Setup file sharing, where you designate a directory/folder as a share to hold the network home directories. On the default install, Apple makes /Users a share, and you could (similar to what Gerben did) use that to hold not only local accounts' but also the network accounts' home directories. In that setup all users' home directories reside in the same place. All you have to do then is check the box "Make available for home directories over" and leave "AFP". See below; note the very last checkbox; that needs to be checked:
I preferred to keep the local and network users separate, so I actually use a different share for the network users, and not /Users. If you go that route, pay attention to the permissions, it's somewhat easy to get them wrong. I think I cheated and used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the /Users directory to another HD, then just renamed the directory. FYI you're actually not seeing this in these screen shots, since I'm using a "fresh install" virtual machine to make the screen shots.
Also if you don't need it, I'd probably uncheck "Share with Windows clients (SMB).
2. You need to setup Open Directory, so you can manage Network Users. Since you want portable home directories, then you might consider using Profile Manager (introduced in Lion Server), which is Apple's latest tool for that. You can also download separate Workgroup Manager as well. Not sure which is better, or exactly why there are both. I think the documention indicated for older pre-Lion OSes, Workgroup Manager is still around.
2a - If you go straight to Profile Manager, and set it up, it will first make you setup Open Directory, then the rest of the setup for Profile Manager itself.
2b - Or you can always "two-step", first setup Open Directory, then later if you want "Profile Manager".
3. Once you have OD (step 2), and the share setup for network home directories (step), you use Server.app to create the network users, and assign their home directory to the share not local. Note the entry "Home Folder"; use the pull-down menu to select your share. See below.
If you forget to set the Home Folder, you can always "edit" the user and change the Home Folder to the share, and not Local Only.
4. To get portable Home directories, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to setup and activate Profile Manager or use Workgroup Manager. Sorry not much details I can provide there, I've only played with it a bit, and was planning on upgrading my MacBook Pro to Mountain Lion before giving it a go again.

Mail breaks with Portable Home directories

Anyone using portable home directories in Lion yet?
Just set up a test account on a Lion Server/Lion Client. Syncing seems to be working fine but everytime I switch computers, Mail freaks out and returns:
"Your mail index has been damaged. To repair it, quit Mail" After 'reloading' my mailboxes, it works fine...until I switch computers again. Mail is standard IMAP to a gmail account.
Anybody else seeing this?

Solved this one on my own. It seems that Apple has neglected to update the Portable Home Directories syncing exclusion rules for the locations of the new Mail files, they still show the old Snow Leopard Locations.
In Worgroup Manager in mobility settings for the clients, under "Preference Sync" change the two Mail related items in the "Skip items..." section to the following:
Partial Path: ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/AvailableFeeds
Partial Path: ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope Index
(note the change from Full Path to Partial Path)
It really would be good if Apple did a little more QA before releasing their products.

NFS Home Directories Yosemite

Has anyone successfully used NFS home directories for network logins?
This used to work in 10.6.8 Server but I am having a hard time setting it up in Yosemite. I need to enable fast user switching with multiple logins to our server which appears to be impossible using AFP.
I'd appreciate any tips on how to accomplish this. All clients and server are running clean Yosemite installs.

Apple stopped officially supporting NFS based home directories when Lion and Server.app was released. I have not done extensive testing but I certainly find two sessions using fast user switching and AFP works with Mavericks clients.
As far as I can see if a Snow Leopard server was connected to a Mavericks or Yosemite OD server it would still be possible for the Snow Leopard server to register an NFS home directory share in to Open Directory. This suggests that it might be possible to do the same even with a Mavericks or Yosemite server but that one would have to do all the work by hand in the command line. The logic for this conclusion is that Mavericks and Yosemite still include NFS even if they do not provide a GUI means to configure it and OD itself would appear to still be able to store records relating to NFS locations.
I have used NFS home directories in the past and found it solved a number of issues including -
Completely getting round Adobe's long time issues with network home directories
The same for some other third-party applications
Allowed 20+ users all on the same server to be logged in to their individual home directories in a Mac Terminal Server setup
This was all back in the days of using Snow Leopard Server.
I get the impression Apple secretly added the ability to use Fast User Switching for network logins with Lion or later to compensate for removing NFS support. This may have been at the behest of the developers of the two Mac Terminal Server products.

Multiple simutaneously logged in users accessing AFP home directories?

Hi,
Many of our problems are described in this guy's blog:
http://alblue.blogspot.com/2006/08/rantmac-migrating-from-afp-to-nfs.html
The basic capability we want is to have multiple simultaneously logged in users to have access to their AFP mounted home directory, which is configured in a sane, out-of-the box setup using WGM and Server Admin.
Multiple user access could take the form of FUS (fast user switching), or simply allowing a user to SSH into a machine that another user is already logged into and expect to be able to manipulate the contents of her home directory.
From my extensive searches, I have no reason to believe this is currently possible with 10.4 Server and AFP.
(here's the official word from apple: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25581)
I've read that using NFS home directories will work, though.
I want to believe that Apple has a solution for this by now (it's been almost a year since we first had difficulty), or at least a sanctioned workaround. If Apple doesn't have one, maybe someone else has come up with something clever. I find it hard to believe that more people haven't wanted this capability! (not being able to easily search the discussion boards doesn't help, though...)
Thanks for your help!
Adam

Parallels Issue. Track at http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=135585

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

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

Home Directories not mounting

I'm setting up an OS X network for the first time.
I've got Open Directory based network logins working, but I can't get the home directories to mount over the network. When logging in, a dialog box says that an error occurred and that the home direcotry is mounted via SMB or AFP.
So I log in as a local user on the client machine to poke around. I don't see the server listed in /Network/Servers, but I can manually do a Connect To Server and put in afp://server.dom.ain/Users/usename and it's fine. This afp:// URL is the same as is specified as the user's home directory.
I have verified that /Users is exported on the server.
Do I need to go in to every client and create an automount map for this or is there something else I've forgotten?
Thanks...
various Mac OS X (10.4.9) 10.4.9 server and clients

The first thing to do when you're having any kind of login problem is to ssh in to the client machine and tail -f /var/log/system.log, then log in to the client machine and watch for clues.
Step by step:
1. make sure Remote Login is enabled in the Sharing preferences on the client machine (you can turn it off when you're done if you're paranoid)
2. on any other mac (or ssh equipped PC) run Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities) and type "ssh username@IP-of-client-machine" obviously replacing "username" and "IP-of-client" with your values, and no quotes of course. Note that "username" needs to be an administrative user. If you haven't logged in with Terminal before, keep in mind that it does not echo back characters when you type in the password. Just type it and press enter. You may have to type "yes" after that to set up the initial trust relationship between the two computers.
3. Once you're logged in to the client machine, type "tail -f /var/log/system.log" (again, no quotes) and leave it like that. You now have one computer watching another computer's logs in "real time" -- VERY handy when you're troubleshooting a reproducible error.
4. Go back to the client computer and log in with the problematic account. The other computer will show you everything being logged in system.log. Watch for clues that something is wrong. (something couldn't be found, access denied, anything that doesn't sound too friendly)
5. Figure out what they mean or copy/paste 'em here! The part that counts is anything that came up on the watching computer's screen from the moment you clicked "Log In" on the client computer to the moment you are at your regular (deficient) desktop, confident it's not gonna do anything else.

Home Directories Remote Access

Hi,
As a school we are looking to give students access to their home directories from anywhere (preferably with easy access from tablet devices). We have an on-premise SharePoint Server (2013), and also students have access to Office 365 which could give
them 25GB areas on OneDrive for Business.
The three possibilities I can think of so far (without spending anymore money as budgets are tight, and I am a great believer in using the in-built capabilities of Microsoft Products before outsourcing to 3rd Parties).
Students have user areas on OneDrive for Business in Office 365
This would be great in a way because the files are stored off site freeing space up on our SAN. But with no ability to make our own backups (can get around this using versioning), our main issue would be the 500MB-1GB art/music files our students generate,
opening and saving these across the Internet would be painful, and although chances are they won't need these at home, I don't want to confuse matters by giving them multiple areas to save things. Although it's great that it also integrates with office
when they sign in at home or in school, I find it annoying that it creates a SharePoint folder alongside the already existing OneDrive area (very confusing for end users). When you click this and then on the OneDrive @ Company Name it gives you
access to Style Library and other config folders as well as Documents (just looks messy to me). It also means students would have to use web pages to open anything other than office files, I have mapped network drives to OneDrive
before and it works but is glitchy when clicking through folder structures. I also don't want to have to sync their files to every workstation they log onto to make the OneDrive for Business shortcut appear in file explorer.
Students have user areas on OneDrive for Business on-premise
This solves the speed problem with large files to an extent although saving large files into SharePoint inevitably takes longer. We would still have the messy menu with opening office files (explained above) and the issue with opening other
files via web pages.
Students keep user areas in a directory on our server, using Work Folders to access remotely
After the issues when looking at OneDrive, Work Folders was a ray of light I was hoping would solve the issues. Keep the existing folder structure but give access from anywhere (with the promised apps for IOS, android and windows devices). I
set it up and looked good, until I realised you HAVE to sync all of your files to every device you use them with. So if they're at home on an 16GB iPad for example, their user area is 3GB and they only have 1GB left, they can't access their documents
at all. Sync would be great as an option, but there is no way for them to simply access their directory at home (even via web page).
Please someone tell me there is a way! (Without spending more money).
Thanks,
Andy

Hi Andy,
Thanks for contacting Microsoft.
From you description, I learnt that the issue you are experiencing is that you want to give students access to their home directories from anywhere without spending more money.
If I misunderstand anything, please feel free to contact me.
I have read all the three possibilities. For the first two possibilities, you had better post them to SharePoint forum. For the third possibilities, you are right, syncing up is really an issue.
So for this issue, I need to discuss it with our discussion team. I will update you on this as soon as we can.
Best regards,
Sophia Sun
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Home directories not being created

Hi,
I am having trouble creating home directories for users on my OSX Server Tiger 10.4.4 running on a mac mini.
Home directoried do not seem to be created for users on my Open Directory.
I have configured my server to be an Open Directory master. I have no other Open Directory replicas/Servers running.
I have set up and configured DNS. It appearts to be working correctly and can resolve my server name to the local IP (10.1.1.X) and give me a fully qualified domain name.
When accessing users on my OpenDirectory via the work group manager the directory name comease up as "LDAPv3/127.0.0.1" (local host possibly the problem).
When I click on the "Create Home Now" button and hit save, the home dirs are not created.
I have checked to make sure that the home directory is shared (owner root) and it seems okay.
I have read some other threads on topics similar to this, but have had no luck. I would appreciate any help in trying to fix this problem.
Please let me know if any further information s required.
Cheers

I had the same issues you've described in this thread. It turned out that I had named my server "morris", and when the client machines went to mount a user's home folder, they attempted to mount /Network/Servers/morris/Users/whoever. When I went to the Finder, I clicked on the Network icon, then the Servers icon, and listed under there was "morris.domain.com" (where domain.com is your own local domain), but not "morris". So it appeared that there was a name mismatch.
The fix was easy. I started up Server Admin, clicked the machine I wanted to fix, clicked the Settings tab in the right pane, the Network tab up top, and changed the "Computer Name:" field from "morris" to "morris.domain.com". From that point on, my login problems went away.
It seems that the Server Admin-set "Computer Name" has to match the machine's FQDN in DNS.

Home directories from GUI work but not from command line

I'm having trouble accessing home directories through SSH. After significant trouble, I reinstalled OS 10.4.6 Server on each of my 24 XServes. This is a HPC with an XServe RAID providing the storage space. I promoted the first XServe to an Open Directory master and created 2 test users. I created a two sharepoints from the XServe RAID--one for general data and one for home directories. I enabled AFP on both, granted R/W access to the default group "staff" (of which my two test users are members) and set the home directory sharepoint ("HomeDir") to automount using AFP for users' home directories through WGM. If I use Remote Desktop to login to one of the cluster nodes, the home directory seems to mount correctly. However, if I try to access the same user account through the command line--the home directory cannot be found.
I can cd to /Network/Servers/headnode.domain.com/Volumes/HomeDir; but I cannot see any of the folders listed there. On the head node, I can verify that the user's home directory has been created--it seems to be fully populated. I've checked permissions, and they seem to be correct; but the fact that I cannot access it from the command line seems to suggest that there's a greater permissions issue.
I've tried doing the identical setup using an NFS automount instead of AFP with no success. I can't find any answers for command line/SSH access to this problem. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
CF

I've discovered something else in the course of troubleshooting this problem. If I login as a test user through remote desktop to, say, node1.domain.com; the home directory mounts correctly; and, as long as I do not reboot either headnode.domain.com or node1.domain.com, I can login via SSH and access my home directory.
Of course, if I do reboot--access no longer works. I've browsed through dozens of other posts and tried to follow other users' suggestions. I've manually created a hosts file, which I've uploaded to /etc/hosts on each node. I've double and triple checked DNS and DHCP--I have LDAP propagated through autodiscovery on DHCP; I have each node statically assigned; and I have DNS entries for each node. I also have computer entries in WGM; and I've used the FQDN of each node (node#.domain.com) for everything across the board.
I'm also hitting the "authentication error" when I try to access my other AFP sharepoint. I can't figure this out.

Home Directories can't be deleted in Workgroup Manager

I set up a Home Directory at the ROOT level of my server to test it. I was successful so I "thought" I knew what I was doing.
I needed the Directories to be in my XRaid as that's where the "room" is and I expect to have 15-20 Home Directories.
So I deleted the User folders at the ROOT level and unshared them in Server Admin (prob the WRONG order).
Now the path to the deleted Directories still shows up in Workgroup Manager and the little "negative" sign is grayed out. I see no other way to delete it.
Now I'm stuck as it appears that any time I try to create a new Home Directory, it "saves" quietly but the user folder it creates is only 44k (although it includes all the Home folders). When I attempt a Log-In I get an error:
"You are unable to log in to the user account "jeff" at this time. Logging in to the account failed because an error occurred. The home folder for the user account is located on an AFP or SMB server....."
I tried exporting all my Users, deleting then and importing them... same issue.
Any other ideas??
Thanks

Hi
When you install OSX Server by default it creates and shares Users, Groups and Public. This has been the case ever since 10.2 came out. Leopard Server continues this 'tradition'. If you delete any of these default folders after first unsharing them, the server will complain mightily as well as giving you problems.
If you want require a sharepoint for your users networked home folders to reside elsewhere simply unshare those default folders and create similar folders wherever you want them (an XServe RAID for example), share these and continue doing what you need to do.
Whenever I have had to attend a site where the local admin has deleted these folders more often than not it has required a rebuild - drastic I know. I have had some limited success by stopping all the services and unfortunately this would also mean demotion to Standalone for your OD Master and recreating the default folders (name them the same) at the root level of your server's boot drive. You can do it using the finder or terminal:
sudo mkdir /Users
Then restart the server. If on successful login the icon on the Users folder comes back then you should be OK.
Hope this helps, Tony

Lion home directories

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for