Mounting a local home directory

Here is a scenario:
A distributed environment with offices in cities worldwide.
Requirement: When a user logs into a local workstation, say in Chicago, the user mounts a homedirectory on a Chicago server. When a user logs into a local workstation, say in London, the user mounts a homedirectory on a London server. etc etc
Can this be done with DS 5.2 on Solaris9 ?
I have not tried anything but these are my ideas:
My first solution is to implement local ldap servers, then configure the client to use the local server as the default server. The local server then has an auto_home entry to refer to the local file server. The problem is that then one cannot set up a replicated environment because the master LDAP server at HQ would overwrite the local LDAP server with a different auto_home entry (unless one excluded the automountinformation attribute from replication ?)
Any other ideas?

[This is drifting too much from DS, but see my note at the end]
For automount see the man page automount(1M) and look for "Replicated File Systems". It has hard-coded selection rules which favor local networks, and you can include client-side variables (predefined + automountd(1M) options) in your values.juser    $MYSRVR:/export/home
*    chi-srvr,lon-srvr:/export/home/&amd (am-utils) is much more flexible, see http://www.am-utils.org/docs/am-utils/am-utils_8.html#SEC58.
home/* -type:=nfs;sublink=${key};rfs:=/export/home netgrp(eur-hosts);rhost:=lon-srvr \
    network(192.168.1.0);rhost=lon-srvr network(17.16.0.0);rhost=chi-srvr rhost=chi-srvrThe relevance to Directory Server and LDAP is that older techniques (often used with NIS) may still be valid and might just need a couple of simple, global LDAP entries. Targeting the tool which uses your data might avoid twisting your DIT into knots trying to control what data gets seen by those tools.
That being said, I am personally very curious to see the DS and LDAP based solutions.

Similar Messages

LDAP with local home directory?

Greetings.
I'm trying to configure the Macs to authenticate based off of the LDAP server. I'm pretty sure I've got that part working, but I'm running into difficulty figuring out how to specify using a local home directory template rather than an NFS / AFP portable home directory. All the guides on the internet out there seem to want to use NFS, which we don't have setup (and don't intend to).
Based on instructions of various texts, manuals, and blogs, I've created a user account called "labuser", and a group called "users", and then given any member of the group "users" write-access to the folder /Users/labuser. This way they login to a default home directory (at least for now). What information do i specify for LDAP's "apple-user-homeDirectory" entry to make it look for this /Users/labuser folder rather than an NFS share?

So basically I should add C:\Documents and Settings instead of /Users for windows accounts?
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AD mobile account with local home directory

I basically have the same question as this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=696367
I have set up Tiger workstations to authenticate to AD, I am forcing a local home dir. Everything works great. I want to do the same thing for Tiger laptop users with mobile accounts. The problem is that OS X creates a second home directory outside of /Users based on attributes from my AD schema. Just like with the non-mobile users, I want to ignore all home dir attributes from AD and just use the user's home dir that is in /Users. So the question is, how can you use a mobile account and force a local home dir with Apple's AD plugin??????

Yes, I know how to click buttons in the gui, that does not fix the issue. The issue is that the Active Directory schema at my company includes extended attributes from the RFC 2307 schema. Apple's AD plugin does not know how to handle this extended schema especially when using mobile accounts.
Apple's AD plugin reads these unix attributes from AD and thinks it knows what to do but ends up causing more problems then if there were no unix attributes at all.
Since this post, I have opened a ticket with Apple. They were able to recreate the problem in their lab with their AD server. The only work around is to create a custom ActiveDirectory.plist file that forces the Mac to ignore what AD is telling it.
This solution works unless the ActiveDirectory.plist file is deleted or corrupted. This problem will only become worse once Microsoft includes all of the RFC 2307 schema in their next service pack of Win 2003 server.

Network user can't see local home directory

Hi there,
I have a Mac Mini running Lion Server with Directory Services turned on. I've been using this to allow network users to log into Lion clients, as well as set up mobile accounts. This has been working fine.
Now I've just created a new network user for use with a Mountain Lion client and have experienced some strangeness with this new user's home directory. The binding to the directory was fine, and the credentials for the network user were fine. However, when logged in, this new user has his home drive mapped to /Network/Servers/<servername>/Users/<username> rather than the expected /Users/<username>. This has bad side-effects. For instance, Chrome tries to save downloads to the server instead of locally.
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Benjamin

So I took my Mac Mini running OS X 10.8 Server, along with two client laptops: one exhibiting the problem I described, and the other where network logins and home directories worked as intended.
Long story short, the guys at the Bar couldn't figure it out. The user definitions in Open Directory seemed ok, but they still couldn't work out why no local home directories were being created. Not sure if this helps, but in trouble-shooting, we also discovered that trying to login with a network user on the problematic laptop didn't work when the server wasn't on the network. It's as if the server is required to be present.
Anyway, the case has been referred to the business team, which is supposed to have more expertise with OS X Server.

Script to remove local home directory after sync

Does anyone have a good script to clear (periodically) the local home folders created by mobile accounts for sync ?
There is one mentioned in John DeTroye's overview of Tiger server v12.1, by Steve Hayman, but I'm having trouble running it via ARD.
Thanks

I'm doing this for 2 reasons:
- as a scripting exercise
- because the local repo is a shared wordpress mess and people forget to make commits so I'd like a local backup that includes all changes that may not be in github (sadly).
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#!/bin/sh
set -e #Exit on any error.
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MONTH=`date +"%b"` # Define MONTH as today's month.
FILENAME="backup-$TIME.tar.gz" # Define the filename structure.
SRCDIR="/stuff" # Define folder to backup.
DESDIR="/Backup/$MONTH/" # Define the backup folder location.
LOGFILE="$DESDIR/backup-$TIME.log" # Store the output in a log.
REMOTE=$(git ls-remote -h origin master | awk '{print $1}') # Get commit hash from head of remote master repo (github)
LOCAL=$(git rev-parse HEAD) # Get commit hash from head of server repo (dev/test)
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echo "No update required." >> $LOGFILE # Then no pull is needed
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mkdir -p $DESDIR # Create our directory if it doesn't exist.
echo "Backup started for "$TIME >> $LOGFILE # Make it log what it's doing.
tar -cpzf $DESDIR/$FILENAME $SRCDIR >> $LOGFILE 2>&1 # Perform the backup.
echo "Backup Finished for "$TIME >> $LOGFILE # Log that it's finished.
echo "Preparing for git pull " >> $LOGFILE #Log what we're doing.
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git pull >> $LOGFILE 2>&1
echo "Git pull completed successfully. " >> $LOGFILE
mail -s "Backup log `date`" [email protected] < $LOGFILE # Email the output to me.
fi

Can standard users install applications to their local home directory?

I want to setup multiple user accounts on my machine. I've been doing some tests and it looks like when you try to install an application from the App Store it requires an admin user name and password, and then the App Store installs the application to the '/Application' directory.
Is it possible?
(1) To set up the system in a why that all users install their applications to '~/Applications' (their home directory) without the need for admin passwords.
(2) If an admin user wants to give access to a application to everyone on the system it is installed to '/Applications'
Thanks in advance.

The default installation is in the main Apps folder. This can't be changed. If you want an app in the user account Apps folder, the user should drag it to that folder when installation is complete.

Hi, please help me.... i have the problem to mount the linux home directory to my snow leapord mac mini

hi please help me

Linux uses a EXT drive/partition format that OS X or Windows can't read.
Far as I know, there isn't a easy GUI/auto method/software that I can recommend.
My advice would be to use a MBR with FAT32 or exFAT as a intermediate universal exchange format on a seperate drive or USB key.
Most USB keys and drives already come FAT32 MBR formatted,

Mountain lion server network accounts are not mounting network home directory, rather its creating a blank local directory

I have set up a scratch mountain lion server with open directory. copied over old user account directories and added my users that match the directory ids. Currently if a networked user logs into a networked computer, instead of mounting the network home directory, its creating a local home directory. suggestions?
thanks,
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Additional info: it appears that certificates are not working either: setting up ical: "the certificate for this server was signed by an unknown certifying authority."...

Home Directory not mounted in Active Directory environment

I am trying to integrate a PowerMac G5 with Leopard 10.5.2 into an Active Directory. The Mac is bound to the AD without any problems. I can authenticate with my AD account and I also see the printers. However, I have problems using the network home directories.
If I activate "Force local home directory on startup disk" everything works as expected: The user logs in and gets a local home directory under /Users and can mount its network home directory with the finder without the need to authenticate again, so the single-sign-on works.
However, that's not what I want - I want the user to work solely in his networked home directory, not on the local disk. So I deactivate the button "Force local home directory on startup disk", but now the mount of the home directory fails. In the system.log I see the following:
/usr/libexec/mount_url[123]: smb_mount: open session failed!: syserr = Broken pipe
This is printed several times. If I try to access to automounted home directory under /Network/Servers/SERVER/USER in the terminal I also get "Broken pipe".
The strange thing: I can access the home directory with smbclient, I can also mount it with mount_smbfs, but if I try it with /usr/libexec/mount_url it fails although I use the exact same server and user directory.
Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

We have a similar issue here. Only the first AD User after reboot can login and the second one gets the same error as you. (see also: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6418268)
It looks like there is a problem with the automounter. I set the AUTOMOUNT_TIMEOUT to 60 seconds in /etc/autofs.conf, then after logout of the first user and waiting for 1 minute, the second user can log in.

Mounting NFS home directory error, please help!

Hello everyone,
We are working on setting up a network of Macs to a Linux server. The server is running NFS / NIS to authenticate, all the users have their home directories on the server and do not have any local accounts on any of the computers.
We have a problem getting the home dirs automounted on the local computers. The users need their home folder set correctly to import settings and so on, and the home folders are stored on the server.
We can connect to the NFS servers, we can get the computers to log in with NIS accounts, we can manually access their restricted info once we manually mount the NFS drive.
However, we cannot get the home folders to mount in the home directory, automounted. We have one working macintosh computer running Apple Os X 1.5, but we cannot get it to work on Snow Leopard ( 1.6 ).
Did anything change in permissions or in the way Mac OS X handles NFS shares or automounting in the update to 1.6, Snow Leopard? Does anyone have any experience handling NFS/NIS mounting in Apple Mac OS X 1.6?
/ Z.

Hello everyone!
Even if I posted this recently, we had been working on it for two days. However, we just defeated this beast and managed to solve it!
It turned out to be simple, as it often is:
We changed /etc/auto_home to manually provide the IP of the NFS server with a wildcard (*) for users, & for username, then commented out the normal +auto_home.
The server was already set up to allow the computers to access everything.
The problem was, in short, that mac OS X has a dedicated slot for mounting in /home and thus you can't mount anything else there unless you replace the normal /etc/auto_home

Single Student home directory for Multiple users

Hi all,
I'm currently working in an education environment and we have 4x labs of mac's. Currently, when students log in, their login info/permissions are pulled from AD and OD. When they login for the first time, it creates a local home directory with their username, so when they login subsequent times they still get all their saved movies, music and pictures. Nothing special.
We are aiming to change over to a new system in which the students login with thier username/pass, but they all use the same local home directory called 'student' (which will actually be refreshing with the default-homedir-refresh script by Bombich). To compliment this, as they will not be able to use thier movies folder, we will have a seperate partition on the computer in which they save all thier work. Idealy, we would like the files that one user saves not to be accessable (deleted) by another student, but i'm not sure if this is possible even though they have logged in using different username/passwords, as they are all using the same directory. To add to this, the users will also have thier network space mounted on login (as its on a novell server, currently we mount it by specifying the address in WGM under preferences->login items, with Mount item with user's name and password checked).
My questions are
1) how do we get the students to use the single 'student' home directory?
2) If we have a separate partition set up for them, will the files they create have the permissions assigned to the individual users or will they all be able to access each others file as they will use the single 'student' home directory.
3) Will our method of mounting their Novell drive still work with the new system?

I can't help asking: Why?
Might help if we knew exactly what sort of issues you are trying to avoid, since you're moving away from what appears to be a perfectly functional setup

Portable Home Directory no longer works on Lion bound to Active DirectoryAD

Hi, All,
I look after about 30 MacBook Air/Pro connected to a predominantly Windows corporate network.
A few months back, I installed a MacOS Server running OpenDirectory and Software Update Services for managing the MacBooks - they are configured in the standard "magic triangle" configuration, bound both to the Active Directory (running on a handfull of Windows 2003-R2 servers) and OpenDirectory; they are configured to use the Mac Server for Software Updates, and with Portable Home Directories replicated on a network share point (through AFP) to keep a backup of the user's data.
When all the MacBooks were running Snow Leopard, everything was running fine... but the last couple of laptops purchased came with Lion and they cannot synchronise their PHD's anymore :-(
I have spent a lot of time trying to pin-point the problem, including replicating a whole test-network with its own AD/OD and client Snow-Leopard/Lion laptops to try various configurations... my conclusions so far are that:
1- using Snow Leopard clients, it just works
2- using a Lion client, when the network user account is configured in the default Users O.U. on Active Directory, it just works
3- using a Lion client, when the network user account is configured in another O.U. than Users (e.g. Company-Name or External-Contractors), then the PHD syncinc doesn't work at all
4- the failure symptoms are a popup window when trying to do a manual sync saying that "your network home at (null) does not allow writing" - if automatic syncing is configured through MCX, it just fails silently
5- when PHD syncing fails, I can log on using the network account, manually mount the share point used for the network home in the Finder and read and write to it without a problem; so it' not a permission problem, but the fact that the network home directory is (null)
6- I have traced the root cause to the FileSyncAgent process which raises an exception at startup - here's what I see as the salient lines from the logfile (i've edited out the username):
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] ******************************************************************************
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] FileSyncAgent-502.2 (r?, BUILT:?, PID:385, OS:11D50b, ARCH:x86_64-64) starting
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] LA: FileSyncAgent -launchedByLaunchd -iDiskPlist
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] ******************************************************************************
0:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] Engineering log verbosity level = 1
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.512] Registered isRunning port with name 'com.apple.FileSyncAgent.iDisk.isRunning'
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.846] Temporary disk storage at "/Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Caches/Cleanup At Startup/FileSyncAgent-1727909307".
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:00.846] UserAgentString = "DotMacKit-like, File-Sync-Direct/502.2.? (11D50b x86_64-64)"
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:03.249] +[SSyncSet_PHD createPHDSyncSetForLocalPath:remoteHomeSpec:mountSuffixPath:name:]: Creating Sync Set with name "HomeSync_Mirror".
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:03.249] -[SSyncSet_PHD _setupNewPHDSyncSetWithLocalPath:homeSpec:mountSuffixPath:]: We've been given local home path '/Users/[USERNAME]'.
1:: [12/02/07 12:45:03.249] -[SSyncSet_PHD _setupNewPHDSyncSetWithLocalPath:homeSpec:mountSuffixPath:]: local home at "/Users/[USERNAME]"
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:06.458] Added new sync set "HomeSync_Mirror".
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:06.465] _incomingIPC: SFCreatePHDSyncSetMsgId (17) took 3.217627 seconds.
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:06.526] Scheduling next sync of "HomeSync_Mirror" at 2012-02-07 12:45:16 +0000
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.122] ==========================================================
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.123] Starting automatic sync of "HomeSync_Mirror".
<PHD> 1:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.126] Peer "local" reports changes since last sync.
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] EXCEPTION: NilPtr <-[SPeer_FS_PHD mountPeerVolume] (Peer-FS-PHD.m:142): "'((homePath))' is nil">
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] BACKTRACE: {
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x105003493
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x104f70866
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x104f6fabd
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x104f6ecb4
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x7fff924bb74e
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x7fff924bb6c6
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x7fff901998bf
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] ? | 0x7fff9019cb75
<PHD> 0:: [12/02/07 12:45:18.128] }
7- if I use the same user account from a Snow-Leopard client, the mountPeerVolume finds the remote home_dir, mounts it and happilly trawls through the two directories to figure out what needs to be copied; I get something along the lines of:
0:: [12/02/08 18:44:15.344] Starting manual sync of "HomeSync_Mirror".
1:: [12/02/08 18:44:15.363] -[SPeer_FS_PHD mountPeerVolume]: We've been given remote home path "/Volumes/[USERNAME]".
1:: [12/02/08 18:44:15.363] -[SPeer_FS_PHD mountPeerVolume]: Remote home path exists.
1:: [12/02/08 18:44:15.363] -[SPeer_FS_PHD mountPeerVolume]: Final path to PHD remote home root = "/Volumes[USERNAME]"
8- if I use a Lion client and a user account configured in the Users O.U. on Active Directory, it works similarly well
9- in the failing use-case, if I run a "dscl xxx -read /Users/xxx" to verify that the DirectoryServices deamon returns some information, all looks good: I get all my A.D. user details, including email config and network home_directory, the MCX payload, etc
10- the only difference that I can see when running dscl between the "working use-case" and the "failing use-case" is that the Attribute for the network home directory is called HomeDirectory (working) or OriginalHomeDirectory (failing) - but the actual value is present and correct in both cases
11- I have enabled SMB as well as AFP file sharing to ensure that it's not a protocol problem rather than the share point itself that causes problem - no difference
12- I have upgraded the MacOS Server to 10.7.3 (from 10.7.2) - no difference
13- I have upgraded the Lion client from 10.7.2 to 10.7.3 - no difference
14- I have tried to manually configure the Directory Search path on the Lion client to map HomeDirectory to OriginalHomeDirectory - either the mapping didn't work or it's not the real cause of the problem, as again: no difference.
15- I have contacted AppleCare, raised a case with all the details above, been escalated from level 1 to 2 and 3 - and basically have been told that customers have reported very similar problems & that no more detail is available to me as it is a Directory Services related problem - if I want to take it further with Apple, I need Enterprise OS Support (and hence $1000s per year - and no real guarantee of result)
[thanks to anyone who's read until now]...
So my questions are (as I can't believe that I'm the only one using "proper O.U.'s" for managing users in Active Directory):
- has anyone experienced this before?
- does someone know of a workaround (other than "stick to SnowLeo" or "redesign your whole A.D."!)?
- can someone help me figure out where the FileSyncAgent process tries to get its remote home directory from - as this might point to a solution?
Many thanks

I was able to fix the issue here. Steps Taken: From the comand line I ran
dscl /Search read /Users/jdoe HomeDirectory
It returned # No such key: HomeDirectory
This was the big clue.... it should have returned
HomeDirectory: <home_dir><url>afp://files.hihllc.lan/Users/jdoe</url><path>/</path></home_dir>
I unbound the Mac from AD and ran the following command in terminal.
dscacheutil -flushcache
I then went into OS X sharing preferences and renamed the computer slightly, so it would create a new computer record in AD. I rebound the machine to AD making sure in Directory Utility Advanced, under User Experience that Force local home directory on start up disk was unchecked and Network protocol to be used was AFP.
I then ran
dscl /Search read /Users/jdoe HomeDirectory
and it returned
HomeDirectory: <home_dir><url>afp://files.hihllc.lan/Users/jdoe</url><path>/</path></home_dir>
I had the user reboot... which was necessary. When he logged in HomeSync fired up. He had quite a few conflicts, so I told him to select use files on this computer for all conflicts.
I checked the FileSyncAgent.logs and it was good.
Let me know if this fixes your issue.
Thanks,
Ray

Time to search PATH varies by HOME directory path ?

I have a rather strange question, as I am running in a somewhat strange environment. I have a SunBlade running Solaris connected via Cisco VPN to my corporate network. After I start the VPN I run a number of mount commands to make my local environment look something like my environment in the office, including mounting my home directory onto my local workstation. I then change the value of the HOME variable to point to the nfs mount for my home directory and update the PATH so that my local (non-remote) bin directories are before the ones on my remote mounts (I use Solaris at work as well).
I've been running this way for a couple of years and it works well, but all of a sudden trying to start an application from my local system started to take a really long time. I narrowed it down to:
if I set HOME=/export/home/localuser it works fine
if I set HOME=/export/home/remoteuser (which is where my home directory is mounted) it does not
It is not the PATH itself as I have the problem even when i don't change it at all. I have a copy of dtpad in /export/home/localuser/bin and that path is the first value in the PATH variable. With HOME set the first way "time which dtpad" takes 0.269s and with it set the second way it takes 4.530s.
This does not make any sense to me. Can someone that understands how the PATH searching algorithm works shed some light on this ?
Thanks

One more thing. I delete the copy of dtpad in my home directory and let it find the real one using the PATH. With HOME set to the local directory it took 0.527s to find it. With HOME set to the remote directory it took 2.139s. Same PATH in both cases. So how does $HOME fit into the $PATH search ?

OD users cannot log on without server home directory

I am new to OD and am trying to configure a working setup for a few Macs on the network. The server is set up as an OD master, and while we are running Active Directory, the Mac server is not integrated into the AD network. DHCP and DNS are handled by the server that provides AD.
I have set up a few test users and bound a Mac to the OD server for testing. I've found that if I don't specify a home directory for a particular user in workgroup manager (i.e. I just leave it at (none)), the user cannot log on to the bound Mac. The log in window begins to slide as if it is accepting the password, then stops and shakes and brings me back to the login window without any error message. If I specify a home directory on the server, it will then accept the username and password, show that I am logging in as said user, then display the message, "You are unable to log in to the user account [user] at this time. Logging into the account failed because an error occurred."
I'm guessing the error message relates to a permissions issue with the way the home directories are set up. But honestly, I'd rather the users just have their home directories stored locally rather than on the server. How do I configure it so that the users are able to log on and their home directories are stored locally?
Thanks in advance for any assistance that can be provided!

After playing around with the system some more, I found that I had to explicitly specify the local home directory. I set it to /Users/ and everything seems to be working now.

Help-Multiple Home Directory stores

I'm having issues getting my home directories to function the way I'd like them to. Basically, I have two groups of users "Studio" and "WebClients." I have a partition setup with the respective store locations:
/Volumes/Homes/Studio/username
/Volumes/Homes/WebClients/domain
My WebClients are actually virtually hosted domains, so instead of the actual user's shortname as the directory, I want the domain name as the directory. I have this set, and under the respective user for that domain I've set their home dirctory to point to the domain's directory. However, when the user log's in via FTP in drops that user into the FTPRoot despite that FTP is set up for Home Directories only.
Both stores are setup as Network mounts as User home directory stores. Could this be causing a conflict . . can you only use one directory for network mount: user homes?
Now, the other group of users under "Studio" work fine. Users can login via FTP or AFP for that matter and it drops them into their home directory properly.
Is what I'm trying to do more complicated than if appears? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I figured it out, need to just specify the "Home" and not the network share point or path.

Mounting a local home directory

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