Migrate existing users from local domains to Open Directory.

Question

Here is the environment I'm working with:
Small local environment (8-10) users. Everyone is on their own laptop, everyone is authenticating to their local directories. Network files are stored on a server, with everyone using a single shared user ID to authenticate and access the files.
I have just installed a Xserve, and it is now serving DNS, DHCP, NTP, WWW. I want to setup Open Directory in Master mode, create user IDs for everyone, and then assign permissions to the shared files area.
The one part that I'm not sure how to approach is the local laptops. If user "John Doe" has a local ID "jdoe" that he has been using on his local laptop, how does he migrate over to being "jdoe" in the OD domain, while reatining his "local" home directory and files? The problem I think I'll have is that when I create "jdoe" on the domain, he will have a UID of (say) 10001, but his local UID is 501 (as is the UID of all the other employees since they are all the first user on each of their respective laptops.) so when he logs back into his laptop after it has been attached to the OD domain, I assume that the laptop will see "jdoe" from the OD domain as a new user and create a new home for him (with the UID:10001), so now John cannot see any of his old files and such.
Also, as a side question: I've worked with Windows ID before, and I know once you join a windows computer to a domain and then login to it, it creates a new user and caches the authentication info, so that when the laptop is not connected to the corporate network, the user can still login and work. Does Open Directory do the same on the laptops?
Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

Retaining password is a manual process of asking the user what his or her password is and then creating it in OD.
As for migration of account, it is rather simple, provided the short name of the user remains consistent across directory systems. For example, if you have a user named Joe User and his short name is juser with a home folder in /Users/juser. And you create the same account in OD. You can do these few short actions.
1: Bind system to the domain
2: From the Admin account, and using Terminal from root, navigate to /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users and find the plist file for the user (in our example, juser.plist).
3: Delete the file using rm
4: Restart the machine or restart Open Directory
5: Log in as the admin user and change ownership of the users home folder. Recall that when the user is in the local domain, the UID was likely 502, 503, etc (you do have a standard local admin at 501 right?) Now that the user is in OD, the UID will be 4 digits, something like 1027. So understanding that user attributes and user data are independent, you now have a folder in /Users titled juser and owned by uid 50x. You need to make it owned by juser from the OD domain. User this:
sudo chown -R juser /Users/juser
6: Log out of the admin account
7: Log in as the user after choosing Other at login window.
Assuming you have your OD account set up properly, you will likely be asked to confirm the caching of the users credentials. This will path you right back into the user's home folder and all will be right with the world.
This is simple and quick. If the shortnames are different, throw an mv into the mix to rename the home folder to match the domain shortname. If you have no local admin, then you will need to reset DSLocal and start again.