Mobile accounts lengthy sync

I run lion server hosted on a mac mini. There are two macs in the house and 4 users access either at different times.
I set up the user accounts as mobile thinking that this was required as any user may access either mac.
Currently I am getting grief from the users as the sync process (checking, downloading, finishing) takes sometimes up to 10 minutes. Note that the checking part of the process seems to take the largest portion of the sync time.
I am now asking myself the question of whether they needed to be mobile in the first place.
If not how can I revert the accounts back to a non-mobile user account. (note: it appears by simply de-selecting all the mobility options in the server workgroup tools does not stop the syncing.
Thanks in advance.
James
Melbourne AUS

A year old, but it sounds like your users have A LOT of information. Probably pictures/movies/music.
The more of that they have (especially iPhoto pictures) the longer it is going to take to check.
You can go in to mobile sync preferences (inside accounts system preference) and deselect those folders from syncing (but they will only have access to those files on one computer), or save them off to an external device and delete them from the computers/server.

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Paul,
I'm happy I'm not alone (sorry..)
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I have an iMac in my office that is running MacOSX 10.4.10 Tiger.
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Is it possible to have mobile account on some computers and network account on others and having the same user logging in (only one login at a time) without sync issues ?
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Message was edited by: kenguru

Again, thanks for taking your time explaining this for me.
After been reading the User Management documentation from apple about Managing Portable Computers (Chapter 8), I got the opposite impression about running Mobile Account on multiple computers. From this text, as I read it, it is a common thing to do, as long as we are aware of sync issues that might occur and know how we shall deal with it.
So I'm a little confused about this topics, as it seem to make sense what you are saying, but the documentation says something different.
I have tried setting sync preferences on the user instead, so that every login is made with a mobile account on every computer. That seems to work ok. Off course sync issues may arise, but here the the file sync can be fixed through the dialogs windows that pops up. Unlike under the mix of network logins and mobile account logins where it doesn't matter which location I set to be the place containing the most recent files. This only occurs after a network account login. If I have been logged on another computer set up with mobile account everything syncs nicely. I think
So for now, I think I will stick with setting up users with mobile account preferences and skip the networked account.
Does this make any sense or am I still mistaking here?
Ok, thanks for all you help.
Bernt

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Forgot about getting this problem solved.
The user account that had this trouble had a copy of his home directory from a laptop in his home directory. This backup had it's own Library folder which was confusing the Mobile account sync process.
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I'm trying to setup a mobile account for a network account but it won't complete the sync process on the client MacBook Pro. Both the server and the MacBook Pro are running 10.5.5.
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Is there a way of knowing what the problem is? Is there an issue with the user's home directory, some file that prevents the sync and mobile home creation from completing?
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I solved this myself. The user ended up have a folder on his desktop that contained a backup home folder from an old powerbook that he was trying to save. It was a complete home folder, Documents, Library, etc and I thought it might be interfering with the sync of the normal home folder. So I created a folder called Bad Stuff in the home folder and copied the old powerbook home folder into it. Then opened up the Sync Settings and excluded the Bad Stuff folder from the sync. And it worked, the sync when fine and is resyncing fine.
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Officially no. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4929
Though some alledge success https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3103493?start=30&tstart=0
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Mobile accounts lengthy sync

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