Migrating Users To Server-based Home Directories

When you install a new server and you want to migrate users to server-based home directories and they currently have local home directories (with iCal, iTunes, iPhone, etc.), what is the process?
Will their local data be auto-moved to the server? Will it be deleted? What?
Message was edited by: Jerry Britton1

I went through this many years ago. Here's what I did...
#1: Create the user in Open Directory.
#2: Log in to the local account on the computer.
#3: Using "Connect to Server..." mount the network home on the client Mac.
#4: Copy all data to the same folders on the network home.
#5: Delete the local account.
Now when the user logs in with network credentials their network home will have all their stuff. Some preference files may need to be recreated but that's about it.

Similar Messages

No Trash on OD Server located Home Directories

We have about 20 10.6.3 OSX Clients bound to an 10.6.3. OSX Server with Home directories stored on the Server. The Home Directories are served to the Clients via NFS.
What was working fine with 10.5 server and 10.5 clients and even with 10.6 server and 10.5 clients now stopped working with both server an client running on 10.6.
If one puts files from the remote home directories to the trash the Finder is not able anymore to place them in the trash, it just displays a message the files would be deleted immediately.
I have done all the usual magic: deleting the .Trash directory, changing rights on that dir, etc.
It seems the finder does not recognize the Trash folder any more. If i delete the .Trash dir it will not be recreated the next time i trash one file. If i put one file inside the .Trash dir with terminal it will be ignored by finder.
this happens with older users generated users as the server was on 10.5 and (sadly) even with new users generated on 10.6 for testing.
Does anyone have a solution for this or has encountered the same error?
Thanks,
Ben

I wonder if it is an NFS issue?
We are serving network homes via AFP and do not have the issue.
Be sure that there is a .Trashes directory on the root of the volume your network homes are on as well as the .Trash folder in the root of each user's home.
Other than that if possible make a switch to AFP and see if it works. That will help narrow it down.

Save As.. and Server Based Homes

Hi there
I'm setting up a new Client/Server system with OSX 10.6.2 on both sides.
There is one "problem" in using server based homes:
When you have a document opend (QXP7, QXP8, IDD CS3, IDD CS4....) from the server, and you choose "Save as" from the menu, you allways end up in the "Documents" folder of you home directory. This also happens when you want to place pictures in the mentioned applications.
Local accounts don't show this issue.
Is there any cure for this problem?
best regards
OH

I'm confused by your post. What do you mean by "logged on locally"? When you're using RDC from a Mac to a Windows workstation or server you're logging on remotely.
If you're attempting to log in to the server via RDC (remotely) and on the server itself (locally) then you will be forced to select one logon and the other will be locked or disconnected. This is expected.
Can you clarify how and where you're logging in?
bill
1 GHz Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Migrating Local Users to Network/Mobile Home Directories

Hey Everyone!
A Happy Holiday's to you all! I'm in the midst of building a new system for my new clients. They had nothing but static IP numbers and no actual servers in a 50+ Mac environment. MacBook Pros, G5's and PowerBook G4s up the yang.
What I'm looking to do is migrate as seamlessly as possible, all of the existing local users to network users and then some of those network users will become mobile accounts. I have Open Directory authenticating properly so...
Here's my plan:
1) Finish creating new builds for the MacBook Pro's, the G5s, and the PowerBook G4s.
2) Create the users in OD and assign them to groups for permissions.
3) Drag and drop entire home directory from each computer to a shared folder on my OD Server.
From here I want to run chown, I'm guessing, to change the user:group for the home folders I copied over so that they match the ID's created by OD. I figure when I do that, then I can simply replace the OD created home folders in my server's Users folder with the copied and permission modified home directories from each local user.
My guess is that would be the fastest way to migrate the users to the network.
My question is are the terminal commands I need to run on each folder in order to make this as seamless as possible?
chown -R username:newgroupname /~path to copied local home directory
Is that syntax right?

The command is correct!!!
But my quess is if you use ACL's to set the permissions you won't need to run the command on every folder
Best Regards

Migration Assistant does not see Home Directories from AD Users

We use AD as authentication domain but home directories are stored local at the client computer. Hence they are backed up via Time Machine. AD Users can use Time Machine like any local user. But now one machine crashed and we wanted to restore the full computer via Migration Assistent. Unfortunally AD Users home directories are not restored to the computer although the home directories are on the backup set. Is there a way to restore the whole Computer from the Backup Set inclusive all Users directories (including these from the AD Users, which had been stored locally)?

So, finally after fourten hours of unattended "migration," I let it continue overnight and in the morning found that the time remaining had not moved a minute. I canceled MA and found that not one iota of data had transferred.
As far as I'm concerned, Migration Assistant ranks lower on the Apple success list than Open Doc, Newton, Pink and Taligent.
Now I have to manually install software I want to use on the MBA, apply licenses, and all the other stuff I would expect from Windows.
NOT happy.

Mac OS X Server, Network Home Directories & Time Machine

hi,
I am using mac os x server to manage a small workgroup using open directory and network home directories, the server is backed up using time machine. From what I understand, time machine does work on network home directories.
However, as I am backing up my server using Time Machine, it is already backing up the user directories. Is there any way of getting a client to access the server time machine backup to access the backups of the user directories?
Of course, it would be easy to restore files by logging onto the server as the user and restoring from there. I am just wondering if there is a more elegant solution available to do this from a client machine.
any thoughts?
thx!

Hi,
I am trying to do the same exact thing and find that it is best to do this locally (for now). Not only is the network way slower, but it seems to make things worse. For example, things backed up via the client machine are routed from the FTP server/volume mount and different permission wise. When you try to restore them locally, it should work, but the folder had different permissions because they were initially created in root (for me). So, I hope they would come out with something better than what is available now. Thanks!

Can 10.6 server serve Windows home directories?

Assuming no AD box, can the Mac server provide mobile logons to hosted home directories from within a LAN to Win XP or 7 users? Don't much care about WAN logins at this stage!
Many thanks

Short answer is yes. XP Pro is much easier to set up with roaming profiles. Win 7 Pro is possible with some dumbing down of the security in Windows 7.

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 - Migrating from a PowerBook to MacBook Pro

On my Powerbook, I'm using one account as PHD. Now, I bought a new MacBook Pro and at the initial setup, I transferred all data from the old Powerbook to the new MacBook Pro, including accounts.
When I now login the first time to the Mac OS X Server from the new Mac with the PHD account, do I have to take care of anything in particular? Does the sync work as usual?
Thanks for your promt help!
Thomas
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark here:
When you logged on to the new Macbook Pro, was it on an account that you set up locally on that machine? One perhaps with the same user short name as your Server account?
The way this works is, when you enter a username in the login panel, the Mac OS client looks into it's own local machine database (Netinfo) to find out if that client exists. If not, it checks the servers it's bound to in the "Authentication" tab of Directory Access and checks there.
So if your old Powerbook was using an account named "kirk", which is exists on your server and synced as a Portable Home Directory, and then you created a new account on your new Macbook named "kirk", your Macbook's OS won't even look on the server because it found a "kirk" locally.
If this is what happened, just do this: create a new administrator account on your MacBook, log into it, and delete your fresh new Macbook "kirk" user. Log out. At the login window, select "Other" and use your server "kirk" login. Now you'll get the option to copy your server-based home directory as a PHD.

Time machine not backing up user home directories

Hi All,
I set up my users to have their home directories on a seperate partition: /Volumes/Data/homes/<name>.
I confogured time machine to back up to an external USB hard drive. The exclude list is empty, exept for the backup disk, of course.
When i do an initial backup with TM, i notice that /Volumes/Data/homes is skipped, whereas /Volumes/Data/kits is backed up.
I also see a console message:
8/15/13 3:21:29 PM
com.apple.backupd[621]
Backup content size: 119.8 GB excluded items size: 113.6 GB for volume Data
Why is this? How can i force TM to backup all files?
Thanks for your help,
Heinrich

HeinrichFromBremen wrote:
Of course not. But there is a difference between lack of perfection and deliberately building bugs into the software.
It's not really deliberate. The number of folks who do what you are is very, very limited.
How can i know that homeis the only omitted directory?
It isn't. As noted in the other thread, dev and net are also omitted. Many other things, are, too - see the tan box in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #11 for details.
With this behaviour, i simply cannot trust TM backups.
A bit of an overreaction, I think, but your choice.
What would be the alternatives? tar? ditto? dump does not seem to exist.
See #27 in the FAQ link above. As far as I know, they all omit some things.

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.

Lion Server for Home use reality check

Hi All,
as many others I had the best intentions buying Lion Server for my home network (5 Macs, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones) to manage everything.
It was destined to be a central server for user management, configuration management, home directories, file server, software update server, web server and Time Machine server and possible VPN gateway to my home network.
I did not intended to use as Address Book, iCal, Mail server as I use iCloud. I just don't see the point of iChat, Podcast, Wiki server for my home use.
Anyway the bits I had to abandon so far are:
configuration management - Profile Manager works only sometimes and is sluggish to say the least
home directories - the home sync just doesn't work for Mac libraries such as iPhoto and iTunes
software update server - worked, broke, fixed, worked, broke, fixed, ... going away with Mountain Lion.
What works for me is user management, file server, web server and Time Machine backup, haven't gotten around to test VPN yet.
Given that Mountain Lion is coming next month and presumably I'll have to buy new license for the Server version I am not sure if it's worth it.
As I see it using a plain vanilla Lion or Mountain Lion system I can still do file server, web server and Time Machine backup. What I'd lose is the user management and I am not sure about VPN on a non-Server system but not really important. User management is a one time task for 5 Macs that's it.
Would be interested to hear opinions from you folks about pros / cons of using a plain Lion or Mountain Lion OS X for server tasks vs Server version?
Anything I am missing here?
Thanks
Andy

iToaster wrote:
most osx server issues are usually DNS problems
if that is not correct practically nothing else will work correctly
That's probably true but also within that lies a major problem how this is positioned "The Server for Everyone". I am in IT and know what a DNS is. Most home users would NOT have a DNS running as it's not necessary not even talking about SSL certificates. I think this is a major problem here that it market incorrectly.
iToaster wrote:
if your trying to have portable home directories and having iphoto library sync'd
I don't recomend on wireless , even on a wired 1gb network it's slow
use WGM to skip iphoto or be prepaired for a long wait
It's not so much a network bandwidth problem but the fact that home sync doesn't work for package files such as iPhoto, etc. Many people have confirmed that that home sync actually corrupts those files.
iToaster wrote:
for the cost of ML server it's probibly cheaper in the long run then the time you'd spend
trying to get the same funtionallity via terminal. plus the posiblity of a OS update
that may blow all your finely crafted terminal work all away.
Don't intend to do terminal but for example take "File Sharing". It's an Server option but every Mac also has file sharing under the "Sharing Settings". As far as I can tell the server actuallty is just an overlay over the Mac sharing option because if I define a file share it's also updated in the sharing option.
Same thing goes for the Webserver. Hence I am thinking that Server really only is a central console for some basic services that can also be available by using standard OS X functionality.

NFS and LDAP on different servers: Problems with location of home director

Dear Apple Experts.
We are using LDAP server for user authentification
and NFS server for home directories.
Both are decictaed servers on differnt machines.
on the NFS server there are directories
/home/urpi
for staff's home directories
and
/home/students
for student's home directories
both are mounted to the Mac minis in
/Users directory
so
/Users/urpi
contains home directories for staff
/Users/students
contains home directories for students
Authentification works well andpermission are set as needed
but OS X shows missing home directories for LDAP authentificated users
and terminal shows missing home directory
for me it is
/home/urpi/fodrek
I was tried to mount NFS to /home, but it is not allowed
Would I ask if there is any setting to add directories, where home directories are placed,please?
I look forward hearing form you.
Yours faithfully
Peter Fodrek

So none of these machines are Snow Leopard servers?
What exactly do you mean when you say you tried to mount the NFS share to home? Can you copy and paste the command and error?
It sounds as though you don't actually have the NFS shares mounted. Assuming this is so, you might want to investigate how the automount command works so that your MacMinis mount the NFS shares on boot.
If your NFS/LDAP server is an OS X 10.6 server, set the shares to be automounted as user/group directories. Make sure your LDAP server is providing correct information on the home directory location. If it is local, I think the home directories need to be in /Users. If your mounts are indeed working but you cannot login, you might consider making links from /Users to /home/urpi or /home/students on an account-by-account basis (could be done with a quick shell script).

What is DirectoryTools? Why is it touching network home directories?

Our normally pacific OD/AFP home directory setup has occasional hiccups. A quick summary of the setup:
1) 10.4.11 XServe running OD master (and another machine as slave)
2) 10.4.11 XServe/XServe RAID serving home directories via AFP
3) 10.4.11/10.5.7 desktops as clients with all users (~50) having network home directories
The hiccups are very occasional, but annoying as rebooting or restarting AFP on the home directory server is the only way of fixing things. The symptoms are:
1) Users get the dreaded "You are unable to log in to the user account 'my user' 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." message.
2) On the server, DirectoryTools is running for each home directory in turn. For example:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Resources/DirectoryTools 30081564 /Volumes/home/a_username 5111 1001 1 user English a_username
The 5111 and 1001 are the user's UID and GID. This in turn runs find, which does
/usr/bin/find /Volumes/home/a_username -exec touch {} ;
The touch plays merry **** with incremental backups, because suddenly everything was altered this morning.
Google has failed me, and I'm pretty much resigned to not finding a solution to this problem unless someone here has come across it in the past.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6739752

Sol 10 TX Home Directories LDAP AUTOFS

I currently have a small network that is comprised of Solaris 10 08/07 machines with Trusted Extensions enable on all machines. The network does have a Trusted Extensions LDAP server that serves the network. The LDAP server is Directory Server 5.2 P4. I have not loaded any patch clusters on any of the systems.
When I create a user I have to perform a lengthy process to ensure the user can log in at multiple levels simultaneously. After the user is created, the process is as follows:
On the LDAP/Home Directory Server (My LDAP Server also serves the Home Directories)
1.     Log into the system as the newly created user
2.     Ensure the session is Trusted JDS.
3.     Ensure �Restrict to Single level� is selected.
4.     Select the Lowest Level Label available to the user. For example if your label encodings file contain the labels FU and BAR, with FU being dominated by BAR you would select FU.
5.     Continue the login process. A single level desktop would be displayed and the user can open terminal windows, etc..
6.     Logout of the system. Do not logout until a desktop is displayed.
7.     Repeat steps 1-6 for all possible labels for the user, selecting 1 at a time.
8.     Once the user has a desktop at all levels, log in to the system.
9.     Make sure �Restrict to Single Label� is NOT checked.
10.     Select the Highest possible label for the user. This will enable the user to select workspaces at all levels.
11.     The desktop is loaded for the highest label available.
12.     In the workspace selector, select each workspace and change the label on the workspace to another security label.
13.     Repeat step 12 until all labels are represented. (The only desktop the will be available is the highest level desktop, the other desktops WILL NOT be loaded)
14.     Log out and log back in again ensuring that the �Restrict to Single Label� is NOT checked and select the highest possible label for the user. At this point all desktops will appear.
15.     Repeat the entire process for every client machine that the user will need access to.
This process only needs to be executed once for each user on each system for all labels. Currently this is a small network, and although time consuming this process is Ok. However, as the network increases and users increase the process will to cumbersome.
I have read in the TX install guide explains this process for the Home Directory server. But I have to do this on the clients as well. Once the process is complete I can log in as the user and verify that autofs is mounting the home directory properly. I have not tried the script that is in the install guide either. I will need to modify the script to ensure only new users are given home dirs.
Has anyone else experienced this behavior or found a fix? Again I am running DS 5.2 P4 and no additional patch clusters.

Are the zones on different machines (1 for LDAP and 1 for the machine the user logs into)?
General:
You may want to check and see if the zones of each machine is listed under the CIPSO rules and not set as admin low ---- tninfo command for this check.
If on the same machine you have 2 options 1) go through the network interface for each zone and use CIPSO rules [regular networking] 2) be subject to the rules of multi-level access, in which you should use multi-level aware process to access the files [keep in mind the dominance issue, and that you should really know what you are doing if you create a multi-level aware process].

Migrating Users To Server-based Home Directories

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