Login issues with portable home directories

We are using 10.4.8 of the OS X server and version 10.4.7 on the
workstations. Students are unable to login to their PHD. After
entering their username and password, they will get the following
message:
"You are unable to log in to the user account "username" at this time.
Logging in to the accounted failed because an error occurred. The home
folder for the user account is located on an AFP or SMB server. Contact
your system administrator for help."
Knowledge base suggest turning off the fast user switching which I did.
I restarted the machine and received the same message. I have tried
logging in different users on these machines and they are receiving the
same message. I reimaged the machine and that does not appear to help
fix the problem. I can log in to local accounts just fine.
Any ideas?
ibooks, macbooks, imacs, servers Mac OS X (10.4.8) Operating from 10.3.9 - 10.4.8

We ran into this issue too because we forgot to enable the Network Mount for the users. Go to Sharing --> Share Point --> setup the Network Mount as Home Directory Mount.

Similar Messages

Very slow login/logout with Portable Home Directories

I've set up Portable Home Directories for our department so that people can work from different computers if need be (also, I think our network is too slow to use network home directories). However, the login times are excruciating - some users report average 45 minute login times. None of these users are moving huge files or anything, and even if I just log someone out (completing the sync) and then log back in, the login will be very slow.
If I disconnect the computers from the network, obviously it logs in quickly because it can't connect to the server, but I don't want to do that (or disable login/logout sync altogether). I tried removing things from the login/logout sync rules, but often the sync takes time just on 'Finishing' or 'Stopping', so I don't think that it's any particular files that take a lot of time.
On a possibly related note, for some reason our computers all take perhaps 30 seconds to get an IP address when starting up, waking up from sleep, etc. Is there any reason why the computer would need to be doing this repeatedly? Especially on logout, this wouldn't seem relevant, but I've seen that mentioned in other threads.
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Greg

Apple Discussions has a special forum just for Portable Home Directories, you might want to search and/or post your question there:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1249

Home Sharing, Network accounts with Portable Home Directories, iTunes 10

I am using OS X Server an on that server is my account. I am also using a MBA with that same account using portable home directories (PHD). The MBA home directory does not contain my iTunes music, that is somewhere in /Users/Shared, because I do not want the added burden of encryption (the home dir is FileVault protected on the MBA, but not on the server)
Thusfar, I worked on the MBA with iTunes and used rsync to sync with the server. There are reasons I want to stop that route (which are not important for the question)
I have just upgraded to iTunes 10 before trying the following:
1. Enable home sharing on the server
2. Look for shared libraries on the MBA
And found out that my account on the server needs to be logged in permanently and iTunes running to use Home Sharing that way. That stops the ordinary syncing of PHD so that is not a solution. Besides, I do not want to have an account logged in all the time.
So, given the scenario that I want full two-way syncing of my iTunes library between my computers and that I prefer not to have an account logged in on the server, is there a solution?

I ended up creating a dedicated local account for iTunes serving on my mini server.

Help with Portable Home Directories and AD

Is it possible to implement "Portable Home Directories" without an Open Directory server, using just binding to an Active Directory Domain. (no "Golden Triangle")?
We are just starting to integrate Macs into our company (finally!) and I'm looking for the best way to allow Macbook Pro users to have their files sync'ed with their NW home folder and still available locally when they are offline.
I'm able to bind to AD successfully but can't find any documentation on how to make the sync happen.
Thanks

If you are putting Macs in a LARGE business environment then bookmark the site www.MacWindows.com. They do nothing then connect lone macs into Windows Domains. Pay attention to the links on side panel of the slash page to get to the section you want to read the reader reports.

Does a 10.7 client work with a 10.6.8 server with portable home directories??

Subject says it all. I need to move to 10.7 on the clients because I need XCode. But 10.7 Server seems dumbed-down, brittle and bug-ridden, so I'd rather stay at 10.6.8 server for the time being. I know already from some off site users of my server that mail works fine between 10.7 clients and 10.6.8 server. But what about mobile accounts and portable home directories? That is a very important feature for me.

It seems to work. Slow and I have seen it hang at logout once (had to force shutdown the machine), maybe because I had two clients open at the same time.

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.

Any Issues with Binding/Home Directories SnowLeopard Client to Tiger Xserve

Does anyone know if I can bind a Snow Leopard client to a Tiger Server?
Can I sync Home Directories of a Snow Leopard client to a Tiger Server?
Are there any major issues with Snow Leopard clients and Tiger Servers?
Thanks in advance.

Hi Ron Yochum;
You might have more luck if you ask over in the Server Froum instead of here.
Allan

Sym linked home folders with portable home directories

Hi
I have a Mac Pro with an SSD boot disk and an internal RAID0 for data. For obvious reasons I want to use the RAID for the majority of users' files and leave the SSD as an OS and application disk.
I've experimented with moving the entire set of home directories off onto the RAID, but this (bizarrly) seems to cause problems with VPN connecticity for remote users. I've now I followed Matt Gemmel's excellent guide here:
http://mattgemmell.com/2011/06/21/using-os-x-with-an-ssd-plus-hdd-setup/
This worked very well for local users and felt faster than the previous method, probably due to ~/Library remaining on the SSD.
However, when I came to implement PHDs via the mobility option in Workgroup Manager, I found that instead of syncing the sym link targets, client machines only sync the sym links themselves, which is entirely useless.
Does anyone know of a fix/workaround so that mobile home sync will find the sym link targets correctly?
Thanks
Ben

I ended up creating a dedicated local account for iTunes serving on my mini server.

Security Issue with Network Home Directories

We are currently trying to solve an issue with some user accounts whereby students can see teacher's user files. We have x1 as authentication, x2 as elementary file share, x3 as high school and teacher file share. All are Snow Leopard Server.
Here is the problem:
If a student is in the Finder and goes to the top menu bar and clicks Go > Network, they can see a listing of servers and computers.
When the student opens Server, the see the x1, x2, x3 servers. The continue to open folders, digging through Volumes, then the data volume and see the alias for Users. The open that folder and see all the Users.
At that point, if they click on Documents or Desktop of a teacher user, they see everything and are not prevented from accessing the files.
The permissions for the teacher user folder is:
ACL:
Group - Everyone Deny Custom This folder
User - Administrator Allow Full Control This folder, Child folders, Child files, All descendants
POSIX:
User - _unknown Allow Read&Write This folder
Group - _unknown Allow Read Only This folder
World - Others Allow Read Only This folder
I would appreciate any thoughts.

Do you know where the _unknown user permissions are from?
Have the servers been upgraded from Tiger/Leopard?
Also, in your group ACL permissions what are the custom settings you have? I'm guessing you're denying access to all admin/read/write?

Portable Home Directories and Login Hooks

We recently switched from Network Home Directories to Portable Home Directories. We used to use login hooks to do all kinds of nifty things to a user's home folder at login, but now it's complicated. I can't figure out at what point in the login+sync process the login hook executes.
If the login hook executes before syncing, then I need to modify the network copy of the home folder, i.e. Network/Servers/servername/.../username. If the login hook executes after syncing, then I need to modify the local copy of the home folder, i.e. /Users/username. Unless I'm mistaken, you can't just use the tilde (~) in the script to denote the path the home folder, so you have to list the path explicitly.
My testing seemed to result in inconsistent behavior. Can anyone give me some guidance?
(Keywords: Loginhook Logouthook Login Script Logout Script Mobility Mobile PHD)

Thank you for the advice, Syth, but I'm already aware of the basics of writing and implementing login and logout hooks. I wrote a lot of them when we were using Network Home Directories. The root of my question has to do with Portable Home Directories and login hooks.
This is a computer lab environment where every user has their own account, network home folder, and "Mobility" preferences set in Workgroup Manager. When a user logs into a lab computer, syncing kicks in and they work from a local copy of their home folder which then syncs to the server at login and logout.
So the core question is: Do login and logout hooks execute before or after login/logout home syncing occurs?
For example, if a user with a brand new network account, i.e. who doesn't even have a network home yet, logs into a computer, what's the order of events? I would hope it would be:
1) server creates network home
2) computer creates local home, i.e. syncs
3) login hook executes
But my testing has been inconsistent. Anyone have any experience or insights to share?

Moving Portable Home Directories from one server to another

I am in the process of migrating users from an older xserve running 10.3 with open directory to a new xserve running 10.5. So far, everything is looking good with the migration, the only major issue I'm running into in my testing is with Portable Home Directories. Presently, the portable home directory on the computer still points to the old server for existing user accounts after they are moved to the new open directory server. On the 10.3 server, the home directories are all mounted under /Volumes/Home, where on Leopard it appears it wants to create the shares under /Volumes/ServerName/Folder. Granted, at present the original server's Home Folders are on a fiber attached raid and in testing I don't have this available. Any suggestions on a way to test easily without moving the raid? Also, is there an easy way to do a mass change on user machines where if I move my raid over to the new server, I can make sure that users data is being backed up to the proper location?
Sorry for the lengthy post, just trying to make sure I'm covering all my bases, heh.

Antonio, thanks for the response. I do have one more question regarding this. On the client side, the mirrors.plist file references the old server FQDN and share name. Because this will be being moved over to the new server, is there an easy method to update the clients mirror plist without breaking the PHD mirror? My big concern here is that either the users will not be able to synchronize phd's or we will have to re-establish all the phd's from the client machines to the server. My thought here is simply using a cname to direct any traffic still trying to hit the old server name to the new server name.

Portable Home Directories Pretty Much Unusable

Running OSX Server 10.6.2 and a dozen or so client macs with either 10.5 or 10.6 on them, we are having huge problems with portable home directories.
Firstly, after a while after initial install I did change certain sync settings in the workgroup manager - namely omitting library folders from the sync, and changing sync frequency from every 2 hours and on startup over to only on startup and shutdown, but none of these settings are ever honoured by the client machines - they keep syncing every 2 hours and just on startup as per the previous settings, and still sync the library folders. Tried deleting the managed preferences folder on client machines, or wiping home directories on the server and recreating - all without success.
Secondly, the sync at startup takes forever (gradually seems to be getting worse and worse) and now hangs for about ten minutes at the end of sync just stating 'finishing'. This is getting to be a real impact on our workflow. Even if users cancel the sync it happens.
Getting seriously annoyed with this software now. Would be nice if Apple actually fixed bugs in their server software - PHD has always been terrible IMHO.

yeah i can only agree to that. wasted dozens of hours settings up a 10.5.8 server with some leo-clients...been testing things for a couple of months and just don't trust it anymore...too much buggy and illogical behaviour and totally insufficient documentation... i rather use rsync to copy client data onto a bkup fileserver.

Disabling portable home directories? (network wide)

We're fed up with portable home directories and the constant sync errors they throw up.
Can I just turn off PHD to make it function as it did before?
How best to go about this?

If you just want to up and shut down the entire portable home directory, and some of your users use it and some don't, the best way would be to select all the users in the directory at the same time and go to the preferences area. Hit the Mobile button, and turn off everything that has to do with portable home directories.
I have a bunch of users that also find they get sync errors.
95 times out of 100 the problems are solveable if the user just reads the sync problem.
With a friendly attitude, point out that they just have to read the error. Perhaps explain what it means... If you do this once, your users will usually figure it out the next time it happens.
Also, remember that sync errors don't have to solved right away. You can fix it later.
HTH
-Graham

Using Portable Home Directories with more than one client

Hi, I've got a general question about Portable Home Directories (PHD) that I'm hoping someone with more experience can help me with. I've only ever tied used PHDs to tie a Network Home to a single laptop in the past. But now I'd like to sync the home directories of a user that uses both an iMac (in the office) and a MacBook Air (on the road).
Any caveats to watch out for if we do this?
What if the user is logged into both machines at the same time?
What if the home directory on the iMac is larger than the entire SSD on the MacBook?
Appreciate any advice before heading down this path…

well... my english is not so good but i will try to explain it to you...
iTunes have a funcion that put the music in the iPod automaticaly and it will put the music of THAT computer in your iPod.
so when you conect your iPod go to options and select put the music manually or something like that (i have it in spanish XD)
or go to the "help" in iTunes > "help iTunes" then... charge iPod > charge iPod manually
this is dificult to explain in english im from argentina XD i hope you understand me XD

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.

Login issues with portable home directories

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