Never - Create a portable home directory on this computer now?

I have kinda the opposite problem from normal. I have Home Directories and PHD's working fine. I think it is working as expected, with one exception...
My Daughter has an iMac at my office. I set up her account as PHD so she could also use the account from home. (We SOMETIMES go home <g>) But when I log on as her from one of the other desktops at the office, I get the dialog: "Create a portable home directory on this computer now?". I answer never. And it keeps coming up. Does Never not mean Never?
Panther Server, Tiger Clients. TIA
PB G4 Al (2), MDD G4 Dual (3), AGP, Cube, W2K Server, B&W G3 Server & others (includes SE30)

Hello,
I started a thread concerning the opposite phenomenon, when you once click "Never" it seems you cannot change your mind and get the question asked again ... maybe you could contribute to answer the question ?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1375953&#1375953
Brett_X said: Most of the PHD stuff happens at the client level anyway
I guess the settings preventing the dialog from coming up are stored on the client machine ?
Thank You.

Similar Messages

Unable to create the portable home directory for this user

This is driving me nuts!
I have a network user who I can login to on any machine on the network. I want a PHD to be created on a laptop and eveytime I answer 'yes' to 'create PHD for this user' I get the "unable to create the PHD for this user" message.
What am I doing wrong?

I fixed this by unbinding the laptop from the od server as I had used this user previously for PHD's on this machine. Setting up the machine to bind to OD again and all is well.

Portable Home Directory - no prompt to create

Not excactly sure how to explain this since I am new to MAC. We are using Kanaka 1.2 on our Macbooks and getting our user settings from Workgroup manager on our Xserve. Everything looks correct but I am not getting the prompt to create the portable home directory when 2 of my users login. These 2 users had previously logged in and when they got the "create portable home directory" message, NEVER was selected. I have deleted their accounts in \library\managed preferences. I'm not sure where else to look.
Any help is appreciated.

I had a similar problem and found this article helpful.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060103033920526
It worked like a charm and I had the tech guy call me later and ask how I fixed it!

Unable to create a user home directory ?

When I use root to create a new account, it can not create a default home directory for this user .
This problem will also cause a lot of other problems when using non-root account to login in.
$ ssh [email protected]
Password:
Last login: Mon Jul 7 10:13:42 2008 from 10.250.X.X
Could not chdir to home directory /home/admin: No such file or directory
Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.10 Generic January 2005
what's the problem ?

chances are its the automounter. check /etc/auto_master. it by default includes /home as a mount point for the automount process. if you dont need the automount for /home, comment that line out, save the file, and run automount -v (-v for verbose output). you should then be able to create dirs under /home. or, you could use a diff home dir prefix, or use the automounter (this will take some setup).

Can't create portable home directory

I recently changed a user's login in Active Directory (she changed her last name.) I changed her local home folder on her Mac to her new login, ran chown on the folder to update her home directory ownership to the new login name and everything was fine. She could log in and access her account using her new login. However, she now gets the message "Can't create portable home directory" when logging in. Nobody else on the machine gets that message. I understand what it's telling me, but I don't know where to look to fix it.

see how many occurrences her shortname has in netinfo and delete the second one. There is a conflict on the local machine w/ her userid and shortname or try removing the first acct and let it rebuild her new user acct on the local machine.

Give up on Portable Home Directory?

I'm wondering if anyone is actually having success with Portable Home Directory functionality in Leopard. I have mostly all Intel Macs... 3 iMacs, MacBook Pro, 2 MacPros... and 3 PPC G5's. The server is one of the PPC G5's. The server and all clients are 10.5.3.
I've just had no luck over the course of this week getting PHD to function as advertised. It seems simple enough... and everything appears to go off without a hitch until you actually attempt to go mobile. Even then, on the surface it seems to be working then you quickly realize that it's not actually syncing. It only successfully syncs when the local home directory is initially created (first user login). After that, any changes you make go to the server... but they don't come down when you move to another computer.
I have everything set as explained in the manual and on this forum. What I want is everything in the user folder to sync at login, once an hour while logged in, and at logout. What I'm getting is no sync at login, upsync everyhour, and upsync at logout. I just don't get it. The server home essentially has the correct combination of what is created on each computer... but each computer only has what was created/modified on that computer.
I just recently attempted to delete the .filesync folders in both local and server user folder root... and nothing changed except that now it upsyncs EVERYTHING every time at log out.
The client machines are obviously correctly bound as all the server managed preferences seem to be honored. As far as mobility, I've tried setting this individually for each user, and also on a group... and the only thing that works either way is the initial home folder creation and upsyncs at logout. It doesn't even try at login.
If anyone has achieved any success, I would love an account of the steps taken and the order performed. I'm at the point now where I'm ready to backup the user information and delete all user accounts and homes and start over. Really exhausting trying to figure this out.

Well I've found some consistency in the dysfunction, but I don't understand it. Still no sync at login, even if I turn off management server side and set it user side. It does sync at logout, although it has stopped re-upsyncing everything all over again each time (don't know why that suddenly stopped, but I'm glad it did).
So here's the test. Logout of users normal computer, it syncs on logout. Go to another computer with a scansnap... Login, no sync, do a manual sync... it goes thru the motions... checking, but doesn't actually sync anything. Scan document, logout, it syncs. Go back to normal computer, login... no sync, do a manual sync... goes thru the motions... checking, doesn't sync (scanned document still not there). Check home folder on server, scanned document is, in fact, there. Logout, it syncs and actually does something. Immediately log back in, no sync, but document is there.
So the consistency is that the home folder sync workflow seems to be working. However, for some reason, it won't sync at login or manually while logged in. I'm at a loss.

Using Portable Home Directory a a backup tool ?

Hi all,
we're still figuring out if a server will be a delight or too much of a bother for our environment (5 people, Powerbooks and MacbookPro only, Airport Extreme only, lots of work being done outside the office).
Anyway, of many resolved questions, one still remains to be answered:
Could we setup a Portable Home Directory to mirror the home folder automatically and in the background ?
In other words: I come back to my table, flip open the computer and don't even realize the sync being done in the background.
The idea is to have a kind of safety net (the mirrored home folder) as a kind of up-to-date backup.
Or would it defeat the purpose of the Portable Home Directory (meaning we have no idea what it really is ... ?
Thanks a lot in advance,
chris
Macbook Pro 17" 2.33 C2D Glossy + Various Powerbooks Mac OS X (10.4.8) Software always current (exept for AE Base station Firmware 5.5.1)

Ah, OK, I somehow suspected that.
So in our case (Desktop computer = Mobile computer =
One and the same machine) it wouldn't make it any
more convienient to have the home folder sync'ed to
the server and have a backup run on that mirror than
setting up a "normal" backup routine on the mobile
computer itself ?
Actually there can still be a fairly significant benefit, and it's the primary reason I use PHDs at my law office. (Like yours, ours is a small network of fewer than 10 machines, and they're all desktop Macs.)
Having any machine go down is a major wrench in the works. So, we have a "spare" Mac that I keep up to date with our basic configuration and an administrator account. If one of my staff machines goes down, I quickly swap in the spare Mac, have the affected user log in to it, and confirm that we want to create a PHD on the spare. A few minutes later the sync is complete and, other than having to reset a few things like dock, sidebar and login items, my user is back in business. That user can happily use the spare Mac with her full home environment until the affected Mac can either be repaired or replaced. When we're ready to put the spare Mac back into its standby mode, I simply delete the staff member's PHD from it and it's ready to be pressed into service again.
I've been through this process twice since we migrated to Tiger server, and have found it to be a much faster path back to productivity than having to restore from a backup. (Although, as I said earlier, PHDs are not a backup solution and we use several Retrospect routines for that purpose.)

Acrobat Pro 9.0 and 9.1 crash using Portable Home Directory

Installed 9.0 as part of CS4 Design Suite, and updated to 9.1. Runs OK for user on local machine but crashes when used by a portable home directory user on same machine, accessing user on OSX Server on local network. Safari also crashes when accessing pdf document. Can anyone help please?

Thanks, the workaround in message 34 worked for me (so far!). Much more helpful than this reply from Adobe: "I am afraid we are unable to troubleshoot errors with customized user accounts. If the program works locally, we advice to use the program locally."
Thanks again.

Portable Home Directory Syncing Problem

Portable home directory syncing sometimes cannot complete, and stuck at "Checking "~/"". Looking at Console message shows the following:
1:: 09/09/03 21:01:12.562 -SSHIPCClient handleStderrLineOrEOF:: 2009-09-03 21:01:12 -0700 'Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.
1:: 09/09/03 21:01:12.562 '
1:: 09/09/03 21:01:12.657 -SSHIPCClient handleStderrLineOrEOF:: 2009-09-03 21:01:12 -0700 'Warning: Permanently added '\[server.domain.com\]:2336' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
1:: 09/09/03 21:01:12.657 '
and that's it. it'll go forever unless I force quit loginwindow. Because if I try to logout, it will get stuck on logout syncing, presumably at the same point. Afterward, I can login and sync normal... for a while.
Under "All Messages" and "Console Message" nothing shows around that time.
When it does sync correctly, the the following messages go after what I had above:
1:: [09/09/10 18:52:30.663] Remote peer greeting: 'com.apple.FileSync-2.0.0 FileSyncAgent-359 r? OKAY pid=1188'
1:: [09/09/10 18:52:30.663] okayBusy = 'OKAY'
Also, on the server's console message, the corresponding greeting does show up even when the client doesn't receive it. The clients forward/reverse DNS works fine on server and client.
The problem happens to ALL the clients, which lead me to think it must be a setting error on my end rather than a bug. But I can't figure out what.
Please help..

I finally figured it out. The trouble was that it was syncing ~/Library/FileSync from the mini, where syncing was failing. The solution was to exclude this folder from the list of folders I was syncing.

Portable Home Directory applet in client finder reads "Never Synced"

We have 10 users with PHD's on Intel iMac's connected to a 10.6.5 Mac Mini Server. All of the accounts have the exact same settings (default sync settings except for exclusion of ~/Music) in Work Group Manager. However two of the accounts always report that the Network Home has not been accessed for several weeks, asking for the user to choose the location of the newest files : Local Home or Network Home. Then after log in the PHD applet in the users finder says "Never Synced". Choosing sync now appears to do nothing. Opening the users PHD preferences in System Preferences shows all options to be correct. Checking the PHD preferences in Work Group Manager also shows everything correct. The kicker seems to be that some kind of sync is happening, at least sporadically (possibly on log out?). This unexpected behavior is unsettling, anyone have any ideas why this is happening and/or how to fix it? I've thought of deleting the local user and then re-creating the PHD account, but I haven't done so yet. Maybe there's a PHD sync preference file I can reset first? Any help is appreciated.

Hi,
You've got a stale sync record somewhere. I would check the following:
1. In WGM, make sure your users sync preferences are setup as you'd like them to be.
2. Open a terminal and navigate to the problematic user's home folder. Remove the .FileSync and mcx record.
3. On the client machine. Remove the plist file for the user. From the command line it'll look like this:
+sudo /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/offendinguser.plist+
4. Reboot. Login as the user. If prompted, make sure you check "yes" when asked if you'd like to created a mobile home dir.
HTH,
-dave

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

Auditing Portable Home Directory Syncing

We are investigating rolling out portable home directories for all of our users. In doing so we've ran into a show stopper level problem. Background syncing stops for some users silently. While a reset fixes the problem we are looking for a way to audit syncing on our clients. Currently we have two options:
1. Checking the homesync.plist key. However this appears to show the last login/log out sync time not the last background sync time.
2. Have all syncing clients create an indicator file at startup and test the server side home directory for the most change of this file. This approach is a tad kludgey.
Does any one have any other methods they have been using to audit and monitor status of the portable home directories?
Does anyone know of where the home sync menu item gets it's status from, ideally we'd like to pull that information directly rather than inferring it through monitoring a file created for that purpose.
Thanks,
Warren

There's a plist for each user at ~/.FileSync/PHD******-<usershortname>.FileSyncHistory
There's all sorts of great gems in there, included separate timestamps for background/preference first sync, last successful sync, etc.
However, I've found that with 10.6.3 there's a bug that prevents the equivalent file from being update on the server side. It shows like this in the mobile FileSyncAgent-verbose.log
0:: [10/05/18 21:55:57.625] EXCEPTION: [data writeToFile:'/Volumes/Users/jay/.FileSync/HomeSyncMirrorPeer-EQB2x69LJS1-jay.FileSyncHistory'
options:0 error:&error] (Cocoa error 512) <-[SStoreFileOperator_FS writeFileData:] (StoreFileOperator-FS.m:1091)
"(Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=512 UserInfo=0x10492c4b0 "The file “HomeSyncMirrorPeer-EQB2x69LJS1-jay.FileSyncHistory”
couldn’t be saved in the folder “.FileSync”." Underlying Error=(Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=35 "The operation couldn’t be completed.
Resource temporarily unavailable"))">
So as long as you're reading the data from the mobile home as opposed to the network home you should be fine.

Strange file created in my home directory!

I just recently noticed a zero byte size file created at the root level of my home directory (see below). It's an ip address (from Belize) with what I assume to be a high port at the end of the ip address. It was created back on December 6'th and I have no idea how it got there. I have scanned my desktop with ClamxAV and the free version of Sophos for mac but all comes back clean. Has anyone seen something like this before, should I be concerned? I did not create it and no one but me uses this profile.

Portable Home Directory WITH a Windows Server/AD and WITHOUT OSX Server/OD

Hi All,
I'm pushing the envelope here a bit, but here's the situation:
- Windows 2003 AD Servers
- Windows 2003 Home Directory File Server
- MacOS X 10.5.2 client (on an Intel iMac)
Everything works fine (once you add the AD server's IP/domain name into /etc/hosts and remove the dashes from the name of the client you're trying to join anyway). I can login, logout, run all the Apps I need. Get fine throughput from the server.
The problem comes when I try to turn on Portable Home Directories (Mobile Accounts) for users of the client. I believe the client is trying to use "Server Side File Tracking for Mobile Home Sync", and so is trying to SSH into the Windows machine. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, is not working.
Is there any way to turn this off without using Open Directory (even there it seems to be part of Server Admin General Prefs and not Managed Preferences)?

Portable Homes work just fine with non-Apple servers. It just that you will not get the performance improvements of 10.5 server's "Server Side File Tracking for Mobile Home Sync".
If Portable Homes are not working for you file a bug with Apple.

Remove menuitem portable home directory

I played around with the settings for creating portable home directories. Then i decided for some users not to use them and use network homes in stead.
However the menubar stil shows the "two houses"-item (grayed out).
How can i make this item disappear. Which plist is to be removed?
Thx

Click on it with the Command key held down and drag it out of the menu bar.
(44787)

Never - Create a portable home directory on this computer now?

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