Moving Home Directories

I have 2 Xserves running OSX Server 10.4.10 ,the OD master is in New York and the replica in Paris.
I have 3 user groups: AllEmployee, NYEmployee and ParisEmployee.
I have Mobility preferences managed for every user (AllEmployee), Background sync enabled and always managed, synching client home directories, skipping ~/Library .
New York users homes are replicated to the NewYorkServer/Users
Paris users homes are replicated to the ParisServer/Users
Now the questions:
1) I have to move one user from New York to Paris. What's the correct procedure to migrate her home folder to the paris server?
2) Anyone why the exclusion of ~/Library works as expected using a Tiger client, but doesn't using Leopard? (both users are not admin of the machines).
Thank you!
Federico

There's about 8 pages in the Migration guide devoted to migrating from Server 10.3:
http://www.apple.com/server/documentation/
download of the 1 MB , 97 page document starts when you click on second one down, called:
"Upgrading and Migrating [to Server 10.4]"
... you may also have it on your Server 10.4 CD/DVD set.

Similar Messages

Best practice - moving home directories

Hello all,
I was looking for insight on best practices for moving home directories.
I was thinking that using the migration tool would be best to move the directories and then using dsrazor to remap all of the home directories for our users.
We are running Netware 6.5 SP8. I have added a 2TB RAID 10 set to one of our servers which is where I am planning on moving all of the user directories.
Thoughts/suggestions are welcome.
Steve D.

Originally Posted by sjdimare
Moving data from one volume to another on the same server should not require migration, correct? I just want to make sure all of the trustee assignments stay in place.
I also will need to redo volume space restriction on new user templates and the migrated volumes.
First test went quite smoothly.
Steve D.
When you move data (using Windows explorer ect) across volumes the trustee rights drop off. If moving from NW to NW use Server Consilidation and Migration Tool. If moving from NW to OES Linux use miggui. The SCMT has a few other features like project planning and verification.

Moving home directories best practice

I have storage manager 2.5 installed and working well and my users managed. I have about 200 users in different OUs that I want to move storage from one NW65 to another NW65. How do I go about doing this in a smooth fashion without downtime for the users. I would go slowly and mig them over about 10 at a time. I did a quick search and didn't find much. Is there somewhere that explains it? Thanks

mfairpo,
I would follow the steps that you guys have already talked about.
Run a Consistency Check to make sure all the users are managed, and that
not none of the home directory paths are pointed to the root of the
volume, etc.
Update the Policy to reflect the change in target path.
Run the Enforce Policy Path management action, but use the MASK field to
move a few at a time. "a*" will move the users whose CN starts with a.
If you want to move several letters at a time you can use "a*|b*" to
move the users who start with a OR b.
Use the move schedule if you don't want NSM to do the work during the
business day.
NSM will make sure that the user is logged out before attempting to move
their storage. The event will remaining pending until they logout.
thanks,
NSM Development
On 9/8/2010 10:06 AM, mfairpo wrote:
>
> Yes, a new Target Path (removing the old path) ought cause pending move
> Events upon a back-fill operation (Enforce Policy Paths). However, we
> also set Rename Inhibit + Delete Inhibit attributes in all policy.
> Whilst I can unset these, I wish some clear guidance.
>
>

FCP & moving Home Folders

Guys, I'm on Lion and am contemplating moving my Home Folder from my Boot Drive to my 2nd Internal HD.
Will this have any adverse and negative effects on any of the Final Cut Studio applications?
I store all my video files and projects on the 2nd internal HD. Nothing is stored on the Boot drive exept for Applications and my iTunes and iPhoto files.
The reason for wanting to do this is my wife and I both have separate accounts. Right now, I do not store any documents (Pictures, Movies etc) on my Boot Drive. All of this is stored on my second internal drive.
Unfortunately, this does not allow my wife and I to separate our documents. She has access to mine and I to hers.
But I want to be able to only access the docs for the person whose account has been logged in to.

edited --
If you have independant user accounts (even if they are admin) you should not be able to see the documents, pictures, ect. folders of the other person so I don't understand the issue of access.
Here is a way to deal with it that doesn't involve moving home directories.
Set up a new account for administration. You'll need it for installations and/or to make system changes. Make sure it has administrator privliges. Remember the password!.
Then, change your wife's and your accounts to "standard". This will remove ability to override the "no access" as long as you stay within a standard acct. You will have access to shared public and site folders.
To run backups, install software, etc, log into the machine with the admin account. If nothing else, it makes it harder to screw up the machine as you have to go to a bit extra to make changes.
x

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.

Multiple Home Directories

I have a OD server running 10.5.2 and and 10.5.2 file server that is a member of the OD. I am curious if this is possible:
I'd like local home directories for all of the computers (which i currently have set up in WGM by setting the home dirs to /Users. But what i'd also like is for them to have a network home directory that they can save files to for personal use. Right now i have the share set up so that there is a folder called /Users on the file server and i'd like any folder in there to be able to be mounted by doing afp://server/username
are having both of these at the same time possible?

This was my point. I wanted total separation. In order to create that separation (when trying to use a network user) I had to temporarily move the existing Snow Leopard Users folder (on Partition 1) so that the Partition 2 OS (either Snow leopard or LION) will create it's own User directory structure. This is only needed for network users (i.e. ones that authenticate via OSX server).
Once the process of temporarily moving the Users folder, letting the new instance create it's own directories, and renaming back, everything works. i.e. when I startup Snowleopard all operations are within Partition 1 then if I start LION all operations are within Partition 2.
When installing new versions of an O/S I like to have control and manage the change so that I know I have a totally working system. Been doing the same with Linux for years, but Mac OS/X tries to be a bit too clever!

Portable Home Directories in 10.8 Server?

I have a Mac mini Server running 10.6.8. Now that 10.8 is out, Apple will probably stop supporting 10.6 (as is their policy) and that means either slowly eroding security or moving to 10.8. I have been looking at the documentation and it seems underneath it all is still by an large the same basic unix-stuff like postfix, dovecot, a dns system, etc. Giving the lack of support for GUI-managing the more complex setups, I'll probably be doing it command-line (stuff like multiple virtual mail domains, multiple web domains, etc.). Not fun (and a business opportunity for some enterprising software engineer).
But what I haven't been able to see in the documentation or anywhere else is Portable Home Directories. In my current setup, I have a 10.6.8 Server and 10.7 clients. On these clients is a single local administrator acocunt and the rest are 'managed mobile accounts'. These are local acocunts. They work when away form the network on which the server is, but when in range of the server, the server may push settings and stuff. And on login/logout and when connected to the LAN and during work, the home directory of the user is constantly synchronized with a copy of the user's home directory on the server. This means my users can take any computer and get their own account and a synchronized copy of their home directory. They can also take a laptop off line for a while and when they return to my LAN (either physically or by VPN), any changes will be synced. This is a sweet setup and it works with 10.7 clients and 10.6.8 server.
But what I haven't been able to find if this will still work with 10.8 Server. I have looked at teh 10.8 Server documentation and haven't found anything about it. Will it still work somehow and if not, is there a good alternative?

Gerben Wierda wrote:
Or: you create the users anew in the network directory, you replace their home directories with the content of what is on the MacBook (TDM is your friend) and do the chmod. Easier still.
That way, I suggest the migration in that way; because, you can test everything out before the data gets moved over. There's nothing like something going wrong in the setup/migration, and you have to do it all over again.
Kirk, you can always put the Home directories/folder on an external. But if you do, you'll probably want to run this command in Terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool YES
That sets the system-wide setting to mount external HDs on startup. The default behavior in OS X, probably around 10.3 onward (but Apple may have flip-flopped on this), is to mount externals on user GUI-login, not on startup like internal HDs. The default behavior is a huge problem with network users, whose home directories reside on the external, since the external on GUI login often mounts "too late" and new "phantom" home directories are created (along with warning messages that the home directory can't be found) and you sometimes get duplicate mount points. In short, the default behavior creates a bit of mess. To spare you some frustration, run that command, which will mount the externals on startup, so the home folders are always available.
It's also handy if you plan on creating other shares on the external; it prevents some flaky behavior.
Gerben's "general description" can be applied to Lion and Mountain Lion, although with Mountain Lion you have fewer tools, and you'll often be working in Server.app rather than some of the older tools like Server Admin.
Again, basically you need to:
(1) Setup file sharing, where you designate a directory/folder as a share to hold the network home directories. On the default install, Apple makes /Users a share, and you could (similar to what Gerben did) use that to hold not only local accounts' but also the network accounts' home directories. In that setup all users' home directories reside in the same place. All you have to do then is check the box "Make available for home directories over" and leave "AFP". See below; note the very last checkbox; that needs to be checked:
I preferred to keep the local and network users separate, so I actually use a different share for the network users, and not /Users. If you go that route, pay attention to the permissions, it's somewhat easy to get them wrong. I think I cheated and used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the /Users directory to another HD, then just renamed the directory. FYI you're actually not seeing this in these screen shots, since I'm using a "fresh install" virtual machine to make the screen shots.
Also if you don't need it, I'd probably uncheck "Share with Windows clients (SMB).
2. You need to setup Open Directory, so you can manage Network Users. Since you want portable home directories, then you might consider using Profile Manager (introduced in Lion Server), which is Apple's latest tool for that. You can also download separate Workgroup Manager as well. Not sure which is better, or exactly why there are both. I think the documention indicated for older pre-Lion OSes, Workgroup Manager is still around.
2a - If you go straight to Profile Manager, and set it up, it will first make you setup Open Directory, then the rest of the setup for Profile Manager itself.
2b - Or you can always "two-step", first setup Open Directory, then later if you want "Profile Manager".
3. Once you have OD (step 2), and the share setup for network home directories (step), you use Server.app to create the network users, and assign their home directory to the share not local. Note the entry "Home Folder"; use the pull-down menu to select your share. See below.
If you forget to set the Home Folder, you can always "edit" the user and change the Home Folder to the share, and not Local Only.
4. To get portable Home directories, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to setup and activate Profile Manager or use Workgroup Manager. Sorry not much details I can provide there, I've only played with it a bit, and was planning on upgrading my MacBook Pro to Mountain Lion before giving it a go again.

How to specify one ethernet port for network home directories (other for normal filesharing)?

So I'm trying to get Home Directories up and running on a 10.6.8 Xserve (waiting until I get my NFS sharepoints migrated to a Linux server [for other reasons] before moving up to 10.7 Server). But posting here since that will be happening in the next few weeks, and it might be applicable now (so I can at least get that resolved ahead of time).
I have a different DNS entry for each ethernet port: server.office.domain.com at 192.168.0.11 for the first, and homes.services.internal at 192.168.0.10 for the second. DNS lookups for both resolve correctly (as does the reverse lookup).
If I use the Server Admin to pick a sharepoint as an automount for Home Directories, everything is fine, but it picks the server.office.domain.com hostname. Picking that works just fine, but that is also the connection that feeds the filesharing. I'd prefer to split that home directory traffic out onto the second ethernet port. So I tried just duplicating the initial connection (since it can't be edited directly in Workgroup Manager) and changing the hostname to the internal one, but I get an error when attempting to log in (the client login screen gives a very helpful "Couldn't login because of an error" error message) and don't see anything in the server logs.
The client machine shows the following line:
Code:
10/20/12 5:27:42.688 PM authorizationhost: ERROR | -[HomeDirMounter mountNetworkHomeWithURL:attributes:dirPath:username:] |
PremountHomeDirectoryWithAuthentication( url=afp://homes.services.internal/Users,
homedir=/Network/Servers/homes.services.internal/Volumes/HomeDirectories/Users/ user123, name=user123 ) returned 45
(added line breaks so it didn't extend off the page)
So it looks like this is failing because the automount isn't in place, but I'm not sure how to work that out either (i.e. how do I add that making sure it uses the internal hostname?).
Any suggestions on getting this to work?
I realize one solution is just to LACP the two ports, but that is a different ball of wax (I may do that later if I get a 4 port ethernet card and performance limitations demand it).

A possible solution might be this.
On ADSLBOX and CABLEBOX configure different subnets for the LAN, e.g.
ADSLBOX: 192.168.1.0/24
CABLEBOX: 192.168.2.0/24
The MEDIABOX gets these static IPs:
ADSL-LAN: 192.168.1.2
CABLE-LAN: 192.168.2.2
On the MEDIABOX, configure the two network interfaces using two routing tables.
The ADSL-LAN routing table
ip route add 192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 src 192.168.1.2 table 1
ip route add default via 192.168.1.1 table 1
The CABLE-LAN routing table
ip route add 192.168.2.0/24 dev eth1 src 192.168.2.2 table 2
ip route add default via 192.168.2.1 table 2
The main routing table
ip route add 192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 src 192.168.1.2
ip route add 192.168.2.0/24 dev eth1 src 192.168.2.2
# use the CABLE-LAN gateway as default, so general internet traffic from MEDIABOX runs over CABLEBOX
ip route add default via 192.168.2.1
define the lookup rules
ip rule add from 192.168.1.2 table 1
ip rule add from 192.168.2.2 table 2
To test the setup:
ip route show
ip route show table 1
ip route show table 2
I don't know how to persist something like this in ArchLinux using netctl. Might require to write a special systemd unit for it. Above is a working example from a RedHat box at my company.
Last edited by teekay (2013-12-04 07:42:22)

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

Moving home folders of existing users

Small office, 4 users so manual file moves or individual user settings updates arent a problem.
My question is, how do I go about moving the home directories of our users from one hard drive to another? My thought is just copy their existing home folders to the new location. Make the new location an automount and a home folder location. Then go into WGM and change each users home folder to the new location. Is this going to work? Anyone foresee any issues? Has anyone done anything like this?

Just wanted to post the outcome of this for posterity. Here are the steps I took.
1. Copy off the user home folders
2. Unmount and unshare the user folders
3. Create the raid array
4. Copy all the user data to the raid array
5. Set up the shares and automounts, setting the userdata folder to automount for home folders
6. In WGM, making sure the url for the home folders was appropriate. Since the new sharepoint name matched the original sharepoint name for me, I didnt need to do anything.
7. Updated the ACLs for each user. These were all erased during copy.
Thats it, users were able to log in again. However, one unexpected thing is that iCal shared calendars stopped working. Users are seeing an error when they log in saying their shared calendars are not online. I dont even know how to go about fixing this. I made sure permissions were correct on the shared calendar folders...

10.5.6 Login Items Error with Network Home Directories

I'm splitting this post off from a previous discussion which can be found here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1835976&tstart=0
With 10.5.6 our Login Items are not working on client machines that use Network Home Directories. Everything works fine under 10.5.5.
When the 10.5.6 client logs in, login items with a path directed to the Home/Documents folder cannot be found, and the following error appears in Console:
"Unable to resolve startup item: status = -35, theURL == NULL = 1"
I have no problem manually navigating to the Home/Documents folder and opening the login items. Removing and re-adding the login items does not fix the problem. Revert to 10.5.5 and the login items are fine.
Below is a suspicious error that I see repeated multiple times in Console (viewing "All Messages") on the 10.5.6 clients but not on the 10.5.5 clients:
Sender:
loginwindow 34
Message:
FolderManager: Failed looking up user domain root; url='file://localhost/Network/Servers/myserver_name.com/Users/my_username/' path =/Network/Servers/myserver_name.com/Users/my_username/ err=-35 uid=0 euid=10790
I'm sure I could find a work-around by moving the location of my login items or maybe even changing to launchd. However, this error seems to indicate something going on with the 10.5.6 install that might be more serious. I've done some typical troubleshooting: DFA, Repairing Permissions, Clearing Caches, trashing loginwindow and MCX preferences, deleting the /Library/Managed Preferences folder, rechecking DNS on the server (forward and reverse lookup OK).
Any help is appreciated!
Thanks!

just to tell you, same thing here - it's nothing special about your setup. it's not a big issue for us as the kernel panic at logout on 10.5.6 is the real killer (no it's NOT JUST FONTS) so our workround is that we're not rolling it out! (staying 10.5.5).
but on my own test 10.5.6 mac i get exactly the same issue with login items that are in the network home. local apps (font management app, ichat etc in /Applications) OK, but stuff on the mounted home server - nope and a line in the syslog for each item:
Jan 28 09:25:54 hc04800-bssaht loginwindow[32028]: Unable to resolve startup item: status = -36, theURL == NULL = 1

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.

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.

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.

Migrating home directories to an Xraid

I have just installed an Xraid to an existing Xserver. I have User Directories on the Xserve and some other folders from a Windows 2003 file server. I have updated my LDAP directory and can't seem to get Workgroup Manager to recognize the home directories I've moved over. The directory on the Xraid is shared and choose-able in the Home section of Workgroup manager. I did go into terminal and do a chown on one of the users, but it still wouldn't see the directory.
Any help would be great!!
Chuck

I'd like some more advice on this as well, as I am about to migrate from user accounts from the G5 Server to an X-RAID. Here are the steps I have in mind. Anything else?
1. You'll need to unshare the current Home folders directory on the server using the WorkGroup Manager.
2. Then create the share-point on the RAID. Make it Network mountable.
3. Change User path to the location in WorkGroup Manager. Shift-select all the users who are going to change path- select the new share under Home and Save it. Check under Home tab to verify.
4. Migrate accounts using ditto copy.

Moving Home Directories

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