Network Home Directory Setup Help

Hello All.
So heres the deal. I got a Mac Pro running Tiger Server and multiple machines running Tiger Client. I can use Admin Tools to create Users, but what do I need to configure on the client machines to see those network User Directories from the login window? I want all of the Users to have home folders on the server and be able to access them from any of the client machines. Im a server newbie and I've never used Directory Access. They are only macs, Do I need to use LDAP or Active Directory? Any tips would be great. Thanks.

You need to create the users in an LDAP directory. If you create them as local users their Home folder will stay on their local computer. The problem is that you can't have the same user name as a local user and an LDAP user. After you create an LDAP service you will have to restart a client Mac, then it will "see" that LDAP services are available over the network. Then the client Mac will have an "Other" choice at its log in screen.

Similar Messages

IMovie temporary files; importing fails on network home directory

Hi all,
I work in a laboratory and manage a bunch of Macs. We have a 2x2.5GHZ G5 with 4G of memory and iMovie 6. The mac has two 300 GB disks that are in a concatenated raid group, so the system has about 450GB of free disk.
The mac is bound to an Open Directory server and users have network home directories. (The network file system happens to be AFS, which is probably unusual)
The problem I am having is that whenever I am importing a clip from any external source (in this case I have tried a Sony GL-2 and an external DV deck), after about 13 minutes of importing, imovie stops importing, and iMovie displays the blue screen that you get when a video source is connected but not playing... but, the camera is clearly still playing, if I look in the viewfinder. this failure mode is completely reproducible, and always fails at the exact same place. (but works fine on another mac, see below)
I have tried saving the iMovie project onto both local disk and into the networked home directory, with the same results in either case.
I've tried the same setup on an identical mac that is not using networked home directories (local only), which works fine. I suspect that the problem has to do with the way the network file system caches/buffers, but I have no idea where iMovie keeps its housekeeping/temporary files. I was under the impression that it is all kept in the project directory, wherever you happen to create it. Are there some files that get written to the home directory no matter where you save the project?
mjp
2x 2.5 GHz G5 PowerMac 4GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6)

iMovie doesn't have temporary files. All files are kept in the project folder (or "package").
iMovie: How to Save Projects to Another Hard Disk
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93296
See "Important Considerations" at the bottom.

Safari and Server Admin slow to launch on a Network Home Directory

I have an issue with Safari and Server Admin that started two days ago. When you attempt to launch Safari or Server Admin while logged into a Network Home Directory on an Intel Mac it will bounce about 10 times, stop bouncing, and then about a minute later launch and act normal. If you quit and reopen Safari you have to wait again. Server Admin exhibits similar behavior, although the delay is longer and there are long pauses while using the program. The network home folder is on an afp share on an Intel XServe w/ 10.5.5 and 4gb of ram.
Troubleshooting steps already done:
1. Same intel mac with a local user, Safari and Server Admin launches normally.
2. Same intel mac with a portable home directory user, Safari and Server Admin launches normally.
3. Same intel mac with a different network home directory user, Safari and Server Admin have the long delay.
4. Different intel mac with a network home directory user, Safari and Server Admin have the long delay.
5. Different intel mac with a local user, Safari and Server Admin launches normally.
6. Different intel mac with a portable home directory user, Safari and Server Admin launches normally.
7. PPC mac with same network home directory user, Safari and Server Admin launches normally.
8. Checked forward and reverse DNS lookups for the home directory servers.
9. Checked entire DNS zone for forward and reverse lookups.
10. These exact same symptoms began occurring the same day at another site I manage with a separate DNS and Open Directory structure in another city.
11. All other programs appear to behave normally as far as I've been able to tell.
I have the feeling that something strange is going on with DNS and Server Admin and Safari are trying to resolve something, time out, then try to act normally. I don't know why it would just affect intel macs. In addition, there were no setting changes or DNS alterations that happened that I am aware of. These symptoms are also happening at another site that I manage with a completely separate DNS and Open Directory structure. I'm puzzled, any help would be appreciated.

Upgraded to 10.5.6 and the issue disappeared. I don't know what what wrong, but I think it was DNS related...

More than one network home directory? (newbie question)

I have a brand new shiny XServer for a small school. They wanted their Macs managed and secured so I eagerly started moving ahead with it. Now, because of the specific file sharing requirements of the school (teachers want access to student accounts and files for homework and such) I created a standard, by-the-book Network Home folder. Then I thought about it, and I shared another directory as a Network User Home folder. And now none of my networked user accounts can log in. They all give me "can't log in, there is an error".
Is what I did possible? Allowed? Recommended? Discouraged? Can you actually define two separate Network User Home folders on the same server, and then assign different users to different home folders? My server crapped out and now I may have to wipe/reinstall the whole thing to fix it.
Does anybody have any experience with home folders like that?
Any information would be dearly appreciated,
Thanks.

Each user can have one and only one home directory, network or local. (Yes, even if you use Mobile Accounts or Portable Homes each account still has one home directory. You just have multiple copies of the user account and each copy has one home.)
You can have multiple share points that serve as home directory share points. In other words, not all of your users' homes need to be stored in the same place. By "network home directory share point," we mean a shared folder (share point) that has a corresponding dynamic automount record in the directory domain. The share point mounts at /Network/Servers/servername/path/to/sharepoint, and users defined in the directory domain can have their network homes defined there.
If you want to grant a group of teachers (let's call it teachers for simplicity) read/write access to student home directories, I'd suggest the following strategy:
1. Create two network home directory share points - one to house the students' homes and one to house the teachers' homes. For this example, let's say that the student home directory share point is located at /Volumes/Disk1/StudentHomes.
2. Create home directories for each student as you normally would.
3. Then add an ACL that allows members of the teachers group to read/write within the student home directory share point. For our example:
sudo chmod -R +ai "group:teachers allow readattr,readextattr,readsecurity,list,search,\
read,execute,writeattr,writeextattr,delete,deletechild,add_file,addsubdirectory,\
write,append,fileinherit,directoryinherit" /Volumes/Disk1/StudentHomes.
4. Now teachers simply navigate to /Network/Servers/yourservername/path.../StudentHomes/student's name and dig around to find what they want. (The teachers have read/write control of all student home directories now.)
5. When your teachers find it a little inconvenient to dig around in each student's home, suggest the following alternative: Simply create a share point to which students have read-only access and teachers can read/write. Within that share point, create "turn-in" folders for each teacher or class, and give students write-only (drop box) permission to the sub-folder. You could get more granular than this simple example where all students can turn anything into any teacher's "turn-in" folder, though.
--Gerrit

Aperture 2 Thinks Referenced Images are Offline with Network Home Directory

Aperture thinks my Home directory is offline, but it's not. My Home directory is on a Mac OS X Server on the LAN (i.e., not on the machine in front of me that I run Aperture 2 on). I'm able to import images from my Nikon D200 in RAW/NEF format using Aperture 2, and write them to my Network Home directory (again, on the Mac OS X Server across the LAN) with no problem. Images are added to Aperture Library as REFERENCED images. Actual image files and Aperture Library are within the Pictures folder in my Network Home directory (on the OS X Server across the LAN). Previews and images show up fine initially. However, after importing and quitting, the next launch of Aperture 2 shows those same imported/referenced images as being offline (i.e., alias badge with red strike-thru). No way to get Aperture 2 to recognize that these image files are really ONLINE, not off.
Tried to re-establish the link from Aperture to each image file using File->Manage Referenced Images..., but that corrupted something. Image becomes red slate with "Unsupported Image Format" message, and image preview goes blank/gray on next Aperture 2 launch.
Previous version of Aperture (v1.5.?) did not have this problem.

Thanks for the replies (in triplicate! from grommet). More information:
REFERENCED images that were imported earlier (using Aperture v1.5.x) show up ON-LINE in Aperture 2 (i.e., all is OK with the earlier images; referenced image badge has no red strike-thru).
The images that were imported more recently--all with Aperture 2--continue to show the referenced image badge with the red strike-thru, indicating Aperture thinks they're OFF-LINE (even though they're not). This makes it impossible to edit or use any of the more recent images that were imported with Aperture 2.
Here's the kicker: the more recent images imported with Aperture 2 and indicated as being OFF-LINE are stored in the SAME general file location as the earlier images that were imported with Aperture v1.5.x and are indicated as being ON-LINE!
My Home Directory is on a Mac OS X Server across the LAN.
Aperture Library is at: ~/Pictures/
Earlier images are at: ~/Pictures/Digital Photos/Roll-000001/1999-05-26-0001.NEF
Recent images are at: ~/Pictures/Digital Photos/Roll-000107/2008-04-17-0001.NEF
Clearly a bug with Aperture 2. I've filed feedback with Apple. Hope to heck this bug is not overlooked in next incremental release. I'm stuck/dead in the water without a fix.

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,
Dave

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."...

Lack Permission to access Network Home Directory

I upgraded OSX 10.4.8 Server to 10.4.9. I also updated the client computers to the same. The server is a Master LDAP directory which houses the users home directories. Since the upgrade when a user tried to login to their home directory they receive a dialog telling them they do not have the permissions to access the directory. They can go to any other machine in the shop and login with no problem. I have found two ways to remedy this. If we shut the affected computer down and pull the plug, when it is restarted they can login. This seems to work 80% of the time. The second remedy has been to remove the apple preferences on the client from "/Library/Preferences", "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration", and "/Library/ Preferences/DirectoryService". Restart the machine, re-enter all of the required info, and we are off and running again. I have not been able to pin this down to a single file. I had one user that I have hit this problem with that nothing has worked.
Before upgrading the server I backed up 10.4.8 to another internal drive. I have since returned to running off of 10.4.8 but the problem has not gone away. I have checked and double checked permissions on home directories and do not see anything wrong.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Rich
Powerbook 1.25GHz Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Changing the schema password is not the same as changing the password for the portal30 user logging on through the browser. If you wanted to change the schema password, then you also need to update the password in the DAD configuration file, which is in $IAS_HOME/Apache/modplsql/cfg/wdbsvr.app. Update the password entry for the corresponding data access descriptor (DAD).
If your intent was to change the password for the lightweight user named portal30, then you'll first need to change back the portal30 schema password - just do it through sqlplus.
The change the password of the lightweight user by logging in as portal30 and then change password from Account Info.

Home directory permissions help

Two questions:
1) the default permissions for my account appears to be set to give me Read & Write permissions, and all others get Read Only? I'd like the default to be that all others get None as a default - do I use the umask command to do this, and if so, with what settings?
2) One folder in my home directory is set such that the Guest account has Read Only. But I cannot seem to alter this - from my home directory, there are only two permissions entries - I have Read & Write, and Everyone gets None - the Guest entry does not even show, and there is no user 'Guest' I can select. But if I am logged in under the Guest account, and select permissions on that directory, I see three entries, including Guest having Read Only. How do I resolve this?

Most of the default (system created) folders in your user account are only readable by you. The exceptions are the Public (for file sharing) and Sites (for website sharing), which are readable by everyone. Folders that you have created will also be readable by others (this is the system default setting), so if you have placed them in the root directory of your user (outside of the default folders), others will be able to read them unless you change the permissions.
If you have altered the permissions on the default user folders, for example, by using "apply to enclosed items", you will need to do some repairs to restore the original permissions (the Disk Utility permissions repair will not repair anything in a user account). Apply to enclosed items... should never be used on a system created folder.
The Guest account only exists when you log into it - normal permissions include the owner, group, and everyone else.

Mac mini server networking and DNS setup help

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with this. I'm working at a small business where I'm the only guy with any IT experience at all, but I'm new to Macs and OS X (<1 year) and being a server admin so please bear with me.
We just bought a Mac mini server as we are expanding from a bunch of workstations and Google Docs. I've just gone through the installation process, but nothing else is on the server, no user data at all, so if the answer is to reinstall from scratch, I can do it.
We'd like the mini to be a file server, print server as well as the gateway for the internet. I realize we could stick to our router and have the server as another node in the network, but we also got a Time Capsule for backing up the server and will locate it in another room to be another wireless access point there.
When going through Server Assistant, I didn't really know what to name the machine so I used corp-Server.local for the Current Hostname and corpserver.private for the DNS Hostname (though i actually use a 3-letter company acronym instead of "corp").
However, i realized after setup we'd want to access the server externally by name, so I changed the DNS hostname to server.companyname.com in the Zones tab of the DNS section of Server Admin (edited primary zone name, changed Nameservers entry for both primary and reverse zone).
I don't know what else I need to do though because there are loads of instances where corpserver.private still shows up, like in the Open Directory section of Server Admin (which btw always hangs when I open it) and the Contact Info of users (eg. user email is [email protected]). I also had trouble earlier using Server Preferences and Server Admin either not connecting or not recognizing my login, but that seems to have abated.
I guess my problem is, where else do I change the DNS hostname? Or do I have to change the DNS hostname back to corpserver.private (in Server Admin)? That way, I think at least everything will be consistent, but would I be able to still configure it somehow so that externally, we could access the server by the server.companyname.com URL?
Also, can the mini be a wireless router for the office? As mentioned before, we want to cut the existing wireless router out and use the mini instead (and use the Time Capsule as a wireless bridge).

So the ISP<->router connection can have a dynamic IP address, but the router<->server one should be static? I guess that means I have to set the IP address in the router. I hope I can get access to it. I don't suppose it matters which one I set first?
An IP router does not assign addresses.
A DHCP server does assign IP addresses upon receipt of a DHCP request from a client.
Some routers (and many firewall routers) do include a DHCP server.
A box with a static IP address does not need to send a DHCP request; it has a static address.
You'll need to ensure that the IP address pool within the DHCP server does not overlap the addresses that are manually assigned to your local hosts; the static IP addresses on your LAN.
[Here is an overview of the pieces involved here, and some of the typical terminology|http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/275].
I hate to belabour the point, but I just want to clarify: in my setup where ISP<->router<->server<->clients, where the server is the only machine connected to the router, which one should be the local DNS server? The server, right? So if the DNS server is turned on in the router, I should turn it off? Or do I need both (ie. router for its LAN (to server), and server for its LAN (to clients))?
So to confirm, the configuration includes (probably) a modem, a router (firewall) and a router (Mac), and then the rest of the (local) show? That is not the simplest configuration, and it's Particularly given that Mac boxes make expensive and slow routers.
The usual configuration is ISP>firewall>LAN and the LAN is usually built from WiFi, wired connections and switches. Within one subnet (which is typical) any host inside your firewall is connected on the LAN, and can communicate (directly) with any other LAN client. The firewall is configured as the gateway; that's the default route for outbound connections.
One more thing that's bugging me: I still don't understand why I couldn't connect to the internet when I plugged in the Ethernet cable from server to router. Even if I was using DHCP to get a dynamically allocated IP, shouldn't it still have worked? I'm worried that I'm going to set up everything as it should be but the connection still won't work.
That's likely because you're trying to use the Mac as a router, and that takes specific configuration steps. It's easier to have ISP>firewall>LAN, and have the Mac OS X Server box and the rest of the stuff as peers on your LAN. If you really want to use the Mac as an IP router, look around for setting up static routes on Mac; there are postings around for that.
If your data is more valuable and your security preferences and requirements are higher, then you may want a firewall with a DMZ, and put your web-facing boxes over in the DMZ. If you're serving stuff to the web or a mail server or such, it's possible to get breached, and a breach means folks can potentially get further into your LAN. With a DMZ, they're somewhat more isolated from your LAN.

Ethernet disk and a networked home directory

is it possible under os x 10.4.8 to store my home directories on an ethernet disk and then be able to mount them from any of my macs? do i need to run os x server?

Try changing the user account's home property in the NetInfo Manager, which is located in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder so that it points to a folder on the Ethernet drive; don't alter or delete anything else in the NetInfo Manager. You may run into issues if you are using the same home folder for two or more accounts which have a different UID property.
(17607)

User Home Directory not being created when "Create Home Now" button hit...

This is a cross post, since I was not sure where this should end up since it touches two pieces- Open Directory and User Management. Any help would be appreciated!
I am running OS X Server 10.5. All of my user accounts have been migrated over along with their home directories. Problem is that when creating new users and then assiging a home directory the system does not actually create the directory.
Currently all users are setup to have their home directory setup here:
afp://172.16.110.100/Users/'username'. The Users folder has been setup to automount, and all users that have folders can be accessed without issue.
The problem is when I create a new user, select the aft://172.16.110.100/Users option and then select "Create Home Now" button and save as it requests... it does not create the directories.
I have even tried to change the Home patch to make it local to see if it was an network issue, and used the /Users choice and it will not create the directory in that way either- both location go to the same place.
The system was obviously able to create the local admin account and directory admin account home folders without issue when the system was installed.
The permissions for the "Users" folder are as follow:
directory admin = Read and Write
local admin= Read and Write
system user (root)= Read and Write
admin group= Read Only
everyone group= Read Only
The system is in production, so any kind of server resets need to be done after 5pm, so I have not been able to reset AFP service.
Currently the only services running are AFP, SMB and Open Directory.
All users have their entire home directories located on the server, and login over Directory Access on their clients, so all user accounts are stored on the server. No one is having issues accessing their files or logging in.
I just can not create new home directories when I create new accounts.

You do not have to be logged on as the root user to do this. Launch the terminal and type-
sudo createhomedir -a
I run an XServe with Tiger server ( 10.4.11) and this has been the workaround I have been using.
Good luck.

Network Users with network homes not really working for me

I have with great pain setup a OS X Lion server on a Mac Mini that was supposed to be my central server to have 4 network users accounts and all the users data is stored on an external disk array with mounted network homes to the 2 iMacs and 2 Macbooks I have in my home.
I have gotten it all working and all my Macs are joined to the Open Directory and each User can login as a network users on any of the Macs and get their files via mounted home directory from the server. The home directories on the server are backed up with Time Machine.
I have found the following items that do not work proberly:
1) Desktop backgrounds settings are just lost sometimes for whatever reason. Desktop background goes to default and you need to manually set back to the one you have selected. This happen mostly if users have their own desktop pictures.
2) Keychain get's screwed up. The user often get the "Keychain doesn't exist to store ..." message and need to select to reset the keychain. Anything I have tried from "Keychain First Aid" to removing and have a new one created doesn't fix the problem. It keeps on coming back.
3) iTunes Storage and AppStore are getting confused about authorized computers. This is because a user logs in from another computer and then iTunes store would tell the user this computer hasn't been authorized to play the purchase music. Same happens with iPhone apps from the AppStore. Apparently those two stores are not setup to hanlde network users proberly.
4) Permission issues happen sometimes in Application like iPhoto where it would complain not being able to see photos or cannot add new photos to the library. Need to run a permission repair on the Iphoto Library to fix this.
5) One critical one is that it's not really possible to restore files from Time Machine. The Time Machine backup is done on the server by an administrator account directly backing up the user directories. When you go into Time Machine on the server even the admin can drill down into the user directories so no restore possible. The individual users have no idea that there was ever a Time Machine backup done as Time Machine is not setup in their accounts on the individual Macs. This prevents any possible restore.
I reckon that many of the problems are related to having only one location for ~/Library as the individual Macs are writing their user related settings into this directory in a central location. So what happens is when something on iMac 1 and then I log in on iMac 2 that might not exactly match this Macs config and it get's confused throwing one of the above erors.
Trouble is witth central network home directory the way they mounted i can't exclude the ~/Library folder. The only option I can see is mobile account because I have seen in the preferences that when they sync the handle Library items differently.
Does anybody have any experience out there with this sort of thing and can advise what's the best way forward?
If i can't resolve this I'll go back to have network users with local home directories on each Mac and just setup for each user a network share to which they copy files if they want them available on other Macs. Not as nice but at least it works!
As a said note I did this to make things easier but it has up to now cost me trouble then i had before!

Haven't heard anything from anybody so probably to daunting a topic ...
I have now moved on to try Portable Home Directories (PHD) and syncing ... what a disaster!
First it took me ages to get this right as the way the home directores are mounted on the clients from the server it's just weired which has to do with how AFP mounts are implemented. Since one AFP mount can't be mounted by several users on the same system they use a workaround of mounting it to a temp directory and then linking it back to where it should be. Of course this causes major problems.
Okay it kind of worked so let's move on to syncing PHD. First of all on initial creation it only sync a small portion of the directory that should be okay but on some of my accounts it never went passed this stage. It said it's all synced but it only had synced the first 10% or so of the data. I wasn't able to make it sync anymore.
On other accounts it correctly synced all the data down, or so I thought. Apparently a few sync session back and forth and 50-60% of the data was gone. On further investigation it turned out to be iTunes and iPhoto libraries. Turns out does don't sync probably via Home Sync!!!
Apple product is not able to probably syncing Apple specific library files!!!!
So here my warning to everybody: DO NOT USE PHD and HOME SYNC to sync your data as you will lose stuff if you have iTunes and/or iPhoto libraries with Lion OS X Server!!!
The whole Lion Server experience has been a disaster for me. Now I have a server that does file sharing and time machine backup sharing. I can do the same thing with a standard Mac using those services. What's the point of Lion Sever for Home if nothing works proberly?

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

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

Newbee question on network home folders

I have 3 or 4 networked Macs in my home and I want everyone to have access to their own home folder from any Mac. Therefore the necessity for networked home folders. But I know nothing about how to set them up or even if it is possible in this situation. I have a copy of Mac OS X 10.5 server but have not set it up yet. Some Macs are a mix of 10.4 and 10.5.
How do I go about learning how to set this up? What are PHD (portable home directories)? How does mail work in a network home directory environment? All family members are on .mac mail.
Thank you for your help in getting this set up in my home.

A Network Home folder is simply where your Home Directory is stored on the Server rather than locally on you Mac.
The experience of using the Mac does not change so Mail and all other applications behave as they do with a normal local home. As you say this allows you to log in from any Mac. but before you set this up it is advisable to make all of your Macs identical, e.g make sure they all have the same Application, fonts, plugins etc because it is only the files that are normally in HD > Users > yourhomefolder
that are stored on the server, everything else stays local.
As for setting it up http://www.afp548.com/ has some good guides for Tiger server that can be adapted for Leopard
Portable home directories are similar in that the Home Directory is stored on the server, but a PHD syncs the directory to your local mac as well, so in theory this is the best of both worlds in that you work on a local home folder and everytime you log in and out your changes are sync'd back to the server.
This still allows you to log in from another Mac, and also means you can work on a laptop away from your network.
But like I said "in Theory" this is best of both worlds, and for the majority of the time it works well, but you can run into complications, such as errors syncing and the potential to loose work if you log into the account on two macs at the same time.

Network Home Directory Setup Help

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