Portable Homes / Mobile Homes and Network Shares

So, i'm now using portable home and its working pretty well. Gave up on using Profile manager to configure it and using WGM instead.
But, I also have a variety of network share points that I'd like to have available on the road, including when I don't have internet. Right now, I can access them via VPN which works ok, but is there any way to sync share points just like my home folder?
In my setup, I'd be the only user who has this level of access to the share points---i woudn't set up any other users to be able to sync them.
Doable?
I currently use dropbox, but dropbox really isn't secure enough for my business (healthcare), and I can't really use dropbox to sync network shares
I've looked at Owncloud, but it looks like the only way that Owncloud will sync network shares is if I give read/write access to those folders to the _www user, and I don't fully appreciate the security implications of that and would like to avoid it.
Anyone got a better idea for making the contents of several network shares (on an OSX server) synchronize to my laptop (which is bound to the server and has a mobile home) for on and offline use?

Aren't you going to run into update conflicts when someone back at the office updates files you also update when offline?
Perhaps a cellular data plan would solve your problem?

Similar Messages

JTree Explore System Drives,Folders and Network Share

Hi all,
I need to list all the drives,folders and Network Share if any using JTree in a combobox similar to windows explorer.Please help me
Sathya

this will help you a little:
File f [] = File.listRoots (): returns all the drives: the local && Remote ones
to list directories & files you do something similar: File f2 = f[0].listFiles ();
check on file/fir: f2[0].isDirecoty() or f2[0].isFile()
Tip:
You probably were planning on reading all files and directories and then showing them. If you did, DON'T. It will take forever! Just list the roots, if a root is selected list it's directories & files, if a directory is selected list it's subdirectories & files and so. Also try creating a DirectoryListener which is active when the directory's contents is visible and which will relist it's contents when it's contents is changed.
enjoy, will be fun!
greetz,
Stijn

How to get "fast user switching" and network shares playing nice

I've been alternating between banging my head against a wall and reading every forum I could find to try and get a reasonable compromise between using "Fast user switching" and sharing a folder from a file server. It baffles me how the network share/mount model of OSX/AFP is completely killed by fast-user-switching; this is a big problem with Apple requiring users to be actively logged in to share music/video from iTunes which therefore essentially requires fast-user-switching if anyone else wants to use the computer. (anyone find it odd that you can share files without being logged in, but sharing songs requires an active login for each user who is sharing? Apple: time to make iTunes sharing a service!)
For the sake of example, lets just say I want to share my /Groups folder from my desktop and have it be accessible to my laptop. Here are all the things that I tried:
Apple Method 1) Share /Groups in the Server.app on the desktop (running Lion Server), use finder on the laptop and drag the share icon to "Login Items", alternative use a startup Apple script using "mount volume" Both of the options work and will mount the /Groups folder under /Volumes/Groups, of course when the second person logs in via fast-user-switching (and occasionally the first person for no apparent reason), they will get /Volumes/Groups-1 since /Volumes/Groups is already taken. Tomorrow we log in a different order and now the previously /Volumes/Groups-1 user has their mount at /Volumes/Group and vice versa. Any links, aliases, finder sidebar references, and application settings which pointed to yesterday's location are now BROKEN. Not very user friendly to my mother-in-law who is trying to find those pictures of the kids and doesn't know anything about mount points. I also can't reasonably mirror the file location structure on the desktop so that application preferences that are synced between the two (portable home directories) work. fail.
Apple Method 2) Use automounter and set up by hand direct maps for /Groups or an indirect maps for the children of /Groups. Now it will automatically get mounted to /network/servers/SERVER/Groups/ on the laptop and on the desktop it will automatically create a similar symlink structure so that the same path (/network/servers/SERVER/Groups) work both on desktop and laptop. Cool. Except when the second person logs in, the /network/servers/SERVER/Groups/ mountpoint is already owned by the first user and they don't have any permissions to access it. Fail.
Apple Method 3) Use mount_afs and specify directly the mount-points. Have each user have their own startup AppleScript which mounts /Groups to a different location (e.g. /Users/Shared/username/Groups) that way they don't conflict with multiple users. On the desktop, set up symlinks from /Users/Shared/username/Group to /Groups so that it will be the same as the client and applications settings will work when synchronized back/forth by portable-home-directories. Will it work, yes it does, but what a bear to maintain. Is this really what I should expect to do just to have multiple users on my desktop and laptop (which again is essentially required now if I want to do any type of iTunes sharing). This can't be what apple expects.
What I ended up doing - the "not quite apple" solution.
Non-Apple Method 4) After a read of "Autofs: Automatically Mounting Network File Shares in Mac OS X" (http://images.apple.com/business/docs/Autofs.pdf) at the very end there is a single paragraph of "Kerberized NFS": "A Kerberized NFS mount can have multiple connections from multiple users, each using the correct user’s credentials for each transaction. This allows administrators to support multiple users, each authenticated with their own credentials to the same mount point. This is very different from AFP and SMB mounts," (emphasis mine)
It appears that by using good 'ole NFS (abeint with Kerberos for security!) you can actually have multiple users on the same mount point. Roughly following the guidance at https://support.apple.com/kb/TA24986?viewlocale=en_US. What I needed to do was:
1) create /etc/exports on my desktop and add a single line "/Groups -sec=krb5". The existence of /etc/exports triggered a start of nfsd which no longer has any GUI options in Lion.
2) Add a line to /etc/auto_master on my laptop "/- auto_mymounts" to reference a new direct map.
3) Create /etc/auto_mymounts and add a single line "/Groups SERVER:/Groups" to create the direct map.
THAT'S IT. Three lines in three files.
Now when I log into my laptop, there is a /Groups that is a network mount of my desktop's /Groups, same location AND it works for all of my users, even simultaneously.
In the end I'm happy with what I've got, but man was this a difficult path just to support fast-user-switching. In Lion, Apple appears to be getting away from NFS (no longer turned on by default and remove from the GUI controls) but clearly this really useful functionality which doesn't exist in AFP.
I'm really curious, after all this work. Any other ways to accomplish this?

In my example above, yes I chose to mount the share "Groups" to the top of the root since that is where I put it on my server and I wanted to keep them similar; but that was just my preference, it isn't a requirement. You can export and mount from other directories.

Dolphin and network shares

Hi,
this is buggin me for sometime and now I decided to post this problem, so maybe someone can help. I have mapped through dolphin an ftp server with movies,music etc. I have added to smplayer.desktop this:
X-KDE-Protocols=ftp,http,https,sftp,smb
Without it smplayer would first copy localy the file on ftp server and that playit. This would stream the file and play. The problem is that FTP server uses plain authentication (local users on FTP server) so when I click the file, smplayer opens but nothing happens. In log says:
[12:06:04:084] BaseGui::checkIfUpgraded
[12:06:05:280] MplayerProcess::parseLine: ''
[12:06:05:280] MplayerProcess::parseLine: '[ftp] command 'PASS no@spam' failed: 530 Login incorrect.'
[12:06:05:280] MplayerProcess::parseLine: ''
[12:06:05:280] MplayerProcess::parseLine: 'Failed to open ftp://[email protected]:21/home/john/nameofmovie.avi.' (I have changed this, for security reasons)
With vlc, the behaviour is the same:
Network interaction failed:
Your password was rejected.
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL
I see that vlc and smplayer don't see the mapped ftp network share as local map but are trying to stream the files directly from the server and ofkors there is no prompt for password(although the vlc and smplayer do pickup the user somehow).
Over NAS evertyhing works, probably because NAS doesn't use authentication... I have tried also mount with curlftpfs but he performance is poor.
And I have also tried with samba, doesn't work - in dolphin mapped the same network share with samba(i have samba also on server), tried playing the video file or music,and vlc/smplayer doesn't stream. Although the log entry is a little bit diferrent, my bet is that this doesn't work because ftp and samba use authentication...
Does someone know how to fix this behaviour? I could just use NAS, but I have also windows pc in home network which doesn't like NAS and the version is Pro so doesn't have services for unix as an option which includes Nas client. Basically, I would like to just use ftp and stream music and videos from ftp server...
Or dolphin and kde doesn't support this feature, you can just browse and copy/pase/delete files through dolphin and that is it?
Tnx.

Well dolphin uses kde kio fire protocol witch is very limited in that respect, use eighter smb4k or systemd to mount it at given folder and this will work

Mixing mobile account and network account.

Is it possible to have mobile account on some computers and network account on others and having the same user logging in (only one login at a time) without sync issues ?
I have tested it with account preferences set on computers and it is working nice until I have been logged in on a computer with networked account, then I experience sync issues. Every time I log in mobile account I got a dialog window asking me to select "Sync Later" , "Mobile" or "Networked". It does not matter what I select, the dialog comes back everytime I log off and on with the mobile account. I have only managed get rid of it by deleting mobile account and sync it again.
Message was edited by: kenguru

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

IPad and Network Shares/Network File Browsing

I've heard of enabling WebDAV via IIS on a File Server to allow iDevices to connect to a network share within the network, but are there other ways to view file shares within an enterprise network(aside from third party apps, or cloud-based apps such as Dropbox)?

I think you will need third party stuff. If you need security and ease of use go with a Cisco ASA and Anyconnect. This will give you both internal and external access.

OSX Clients with portable homes on nfs share on non mac hardware

Hello,
Has anyone already been using an NFS Filer, as EMC VNX, a Netapp or simply a QNAP or other NFS capable device to put the homedirectories for your users on it ?
I've been trying this out now for monthes but without success.
The nfs share should be sys exported eventually with krb5, and all clients should be redirected to that NFS - Sharepoint for their homedirectories in opendirectory.
Server should be Lion with LDAP Master, and the nfs export on an external nfs box.
In lab we tested it, but workgroupmanager quits when trying to create a homedir on the nfs box. (NAS)
Is there a tutorial on how to set that up ? or a whitepaper ?

FWIW: I used the first VAIO's to come out .. then the second lot - We support both Windows and Macs - I had a client who had 'an expert' in Video recommend the Sonys so he bought a few.
They were, in my opinion, the worst video computers I have ever worked with in every single way. It was a real Kludge, the whole thing...- from HW quality through software design, workflow - the lot.. maybe they've improved - but there was a lot of room for it ..:)
I don't think I'd worry too much about the Mac OS running on windows boxen ... it's unlikely to ever work very well or to be a 'mainstream' activity: the 'Mac advantage' is a whole lot more than just the OS in isolation - wonderful tho OS X is...I prefer to think of the huge advantages to Apple of having Windows run on Macs at 'native' speed with Native Apps - It will get a lot of people off the fence and into a Mac. And, as we all know, once you get started down that path, very few ever return *wicked grin*
And yes, the Apple laptops have been the coolest things on the planet for years - IMNSHO... - so is the MacBook Pro - apart from the poor name

[SOLVED] LibreOffice and Network Shares via Gigolo

My work desktop mounts shares in Active Directory using Gigolo. I am able to mount, browse and generally be at peace with the world with this setup with Thunar and Nautilus, and everything else (eg, gedit).
For some reason, LibreOffice refuses to show any of the network mounts. When I try and save a document, the mounted shares just aren't there. I would expect them to show under "My Documents" in the left of this [img]screenshot[/img].
Browsing to ~/.gvfs/ doesn't display anything either.
If I try and open a file from any of the shares by double-clicking them in Thunar/Nautilus then I get the LibreOffice splash screen and then nothing. The main window doesn't open and the process terminates.
Any ideas folks?
Last edited by fukawi2 (2013-11-18 22:16:22)

Well that's embarressing that it was that easy. That makes the whole thing look much better too. I had no idea there was a split of a separate Gnome package, but looking at the wiki it doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere other than for making everything look nicer. I might fix that up.
Thanks Awebb +50 internets for you.

Issue with Windows Explorer search function and network shares.

Hello all,
I hope all is well, I am having a very odd issue.
One user when they access a particular network drive, and try to use the explorer search function it prompts the following error
Runtime error
Program:
This application has requested the runtime to terminate in a unusual way. Please contact application team for support.
I have checked the event viewer on both the user machine and server hosting the share, not events show up regarding the issue.
I have tried with the user machine in safe mode with networking, and the issue still occurs
It of course is not telling which application or program is causing this.
I have confirmed all windows updates are up to date.
I have gone to the windows search in services and swapped the 1 for a 0, that opened up three of the four network drives for search
the last one is still causing this error.
User computer is windows 7 professional 64 bit
server is windows server 2012 64 bit.
I am at a total loss as to why this is happening on two machines out of ten.
any help or suggestions would be most appreciated.
Cheers
Josh

Hi Josh,
What operation did the user act and how to use the explorer search function to cause the issue? Please check if the issue still exists after the user does the same action locally.
You could refer to the thread below to troubleshoot the issue:
Windows Explorer crashes continually on Windows 7 with Visual C++ Runtime error
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/windows-explorer-crashes-continually-on-windows-7/70c333ba-0cd3-4308-96ce-e81931d123e3
Best Regards,
Mandy
We
are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

Network home structure vs portable home structure

I have two principle groups: Faculty and Students.
I wish to use portable homes with the faculty, and just network homes for the students (as there is just too much support issues with portable homes with the students)
The portable home structure needs to mirror the structure of the faculty's local home. But I would prefer not to have the student's network home look like their local home. (as they will get the network home confused with their local home). I understand that I can alter the template (/System/Library/UserTemplate/) which defines what the network home will look like, but I believe this will alter the structure of any portable homes which are created for the faculty as well.
Is there any means of having two different templates, one for use with portable homes, and one for use with network (non-portable) homes?

Not to be a "wet blanket" here, but are you sure you want students to have network homes?
Our system is set up with faculty using either PHD or Network homes depending on their computer type (laptop users get the PHD, desktop users network homes). Students are authenticated to be able to log into the system, but they don't get any kind of network home.
We provide a SAN that students can save work to, but it is completely erased each semester. The lab computers are also imaged at least once a semester, so anything that a student saves there is also deleted.
The reason is simple: storage space. With 400 students working on 24 computers, it would quickly become a data nightmare. Imagine if each of those students had just 10 gigs of storage online (that would be about 4 terabytes if my math is correct).
Now as far as templates, you can mostly accomplish this through Workgroup manager. Create groups and set whatever preferences you wish. It is a little trickier if you are also bound to Active Directory, but still possible.

Portable Home Directories and Login Hooks

We recently switched from Network Home Directories to Portable Home Directories. We used to use login hooks to do all kinds of nifty things to a user's home folder at login, but now it's complicated. I can't figure out at what point in the login+sync process the login hook executes.
If the login hook executes before syncing, then I need to modify the network copy of the home folder, i.e. Network/Servers/servername/.../username. If the login hook executes after syncing, then I need to modify the local copy of the home folder, i.e. /Users/username. Unless I'm mistaken, you can't just use the tilde (~) in the script to denote the path the home folder, so you have to list the path explicitly.
My testing seemed to result in inconsistent behavior. Can anyone give me some guidance?
(Keywords: Loginhook Logouthook Login Script Logout Script Mobility Mobile PHD)

Thank you for the advice, Syth, but I'm already aware of the basics of writing and implementing login and logout hooks. I wrote a lot of them when we were using Network Home Directories. The root of my question has to do with Portable Home Directories and login hooks.
This is a computer lab environment where every user has their own account, network home folder, and "Mobility" preferences set in Workgroup Manager. When a user logs into a lab computer, syncing kicks in and they work from a local copy of their home folder which then syncs to the server at login and logout.
So the core question is: Do login and logout hooks execute before or after login/logout home syncing occurs?
For example, if a user with a brand new network account, i.e. who doesn't even have a network home yet, logs into a computer, what's the order of events? I would hope it would be:
1) server creates network home
2) computer creates local home, i.e. syncs
3) login hook executes
But my testing has been inconsistent. Anyone have any experience or insights to share?

G4 laptop shows up / disappears randomly on both home and office network

I have a G4 laptop that I take between my office and home and for years have had no problem transferring files between it and multiple Macs at both locations. Something has happened in the last few days in which the G4 will show up sometimes on the bonjour network, and then it will not. I'll restart it . . . sometimes it will show up again, sometimes it will not. I've cleared the PRAM, run Cocktail, Applejack . . . same problem. Any ideas what has suddenly affected bonjour on the G4?

If you intend using your portable Mac in a variety of different environments then I recommend you create a series of Locations and then switch between them as required. Keep Automatic for your most used network such as your home or office and then create additional ones for say, wireless networks on the road, an internet connection via your mobile phone and so on.
I am getting confused though, you say
'Actually, even if I boot to the login screen, I will see the G4 appear and can start transferring files, but after 10 -15 minutes, it disappears.'
From what you said earlier in this thread I thought you meant that the G4 laptop would either be visible or not to the other Macs when you join one of your networks not that it is visible for a while then drops off the network. Which is it please?
If it is the latter then check in System Preferences/Energy Saver to see if 'Put the hard disk(s) to sleep ...' is ticked and if it is untick it. You might also want to extend the time for 'Put the computer to sleep ....' to see if that makes a difference.
Message was edited by: Sean Dale1

Portable Home Directories, FileSyncAgent, and Case-sensitive drives

I have a 10.5.3 Server machine that is serving (via NFS) home directories to a mixed group of Leopard (10.5.3) and Linux clients. The drive containing user home directories is formatted to be case-sensitive. I also use Portable Home Directories and mobile accounts on all the Leopard clients. Many of the client machines have case-insensitive drives.
FileSyncAgent is dying on the client machines with a lot of "Reverification failed" messasges in ~/Library/Logs/FileSyncAgent.log. The files being verified often have mixed case file names, while the error messages show lower case file names.
Anyone else seeing FileSyncAgent dying on every home sync?

Hi Guys, So far I have found what seems to be a fix for this issue. I was also having the issue happen to me around some iphoto file but that seems to be coincidental. I will detail what I did below but please first backup the mobile account on the local machine as you will need to recreate it.
Backup the local mobile home folder
Log into a admin account and delete the mobile account under the Accounts Pane in System Prefs
Log into the users Network account on the notebook
Delete all the following items
~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices
~/Library/Mirrors
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.syncservices.*
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.filesync.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.homesync.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.syndication.plist
~/Library/Preferences/Syndication
Logout of the Network account and then back in
Recreate the Mobile Account
From this point on I have not seen any issues with the FileSyncAgent crashing. Omit any of the files listed above that do not exist. I generally have the notebooks sync on login and logout and I forced a sync while logged in to make sure everything was okay and so far so good. Hope this helps.

Open directory, network homes and MS Word

We are running OS X & Server 10.4.8, and Word 11.2. Using network home directories, with 15users and 3 of them are portable. Running Open directory wih LDAPv3, SSL, SMB and AFP for the network homes (?).
When one of the portable users try to save his Word files he recieves the following error-message: "Word cannot save this file because it is already open elsewhere"
Google turned up the following results and suggestions from other ppl with the same problem:
#1 - Create .TemporaryItems and/or modify owner(s) on the network share.
#2 - Change the directory where files are saved via: Word > Preferences > File locaion > Document > 'Modify' (change to users 'Documents' folder.
#3 - Delete .com.microsoft.Word.prefs.plist file in: User > Library > Preferences > Microsoft > (user is the name of the account having the prob)
Link to someone with the same problem(contains most of the solutions):
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-46413.html
Link to a combination of solution #1 & #2 (and a descrip of the prob):
http://www.macfixitforums.com/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=OfficeX&Number=721294& page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=31&fpart=
I have tried all of the solutions above, the first one seemed promesing but the folder already existed so i just verified that the permissions were correct and moved on. User still has the problem.
End of the last thread i posted suggests that there is no solution for this problem in Os X 10.4.2 and i read another place that it is related to Os X not closing connections to the file on the share, so it is tricked into thinking the file is open in two places when you save it the first time.
Please help!!

It was kindof a strange problem with RDC (Remote desktop connection, windows not apple).
After i installed the script RDC stopped working and i had to uninstall the script to save RDC (it`s more important then the error message in office). But uninstalling didnt work, so i did some experimenting and found out that RDC started working again if he just moved to another computer where he hadnt loaded his user while the script was running.
And even more surprislingly when he moved back to his own computer again it started working again there too. (We use network accounts)
May i ask you how you uninstalled it?

Using laptop on separate home and office wireless networks

I have a laptop the connects (wireless) to my home router and my other home computers. At work we have a wireless router (both home and office are linksys wrt54g's). I can connect to the router at work, get to the internet, but can't "see" the other PCs at work.
Is there a good reference to trouble shoot the various settings for the routers, Windows XP, firewalls, Symantic, McAfee, and so on? I have administration privileges on all the systems and routers, but can't seem to get the settings right. BTW both routers are hardwired to PCs that use the same version of McAfee's security programs - my laptop uses Symantic security programs
Thanks.

If you intend using your portable Mac in a variety of different environments then I recommend you create a series of Locations and then switch between them as required. Keep Automatic for your most used network such as your home or office and then create additional ones for say, wireless networks on the road, an internet connection via your mobile phone and so on.
I am getting confused though, you say
'Actually, even if I boot to the login screen, I will see the G4 appear and can start transferring files, but after 10 -15 minutes, it disappears.'
From what you said earlier in this thread I thought you meant that the G4 laptop would either be visible or not to the other Macs when you join one of your networks not that it is visible for a while then drops off the network. Which is it please?
If it is the latter then check in System Preferences/Energy Saver to see if 'Put the hard disk(s) to sleep ...' is ticked and if it is untick it. You might also want to extend the time for 'Put the computer to sleep ....' to see if that makes a difference.
Message was edited by: Sean Dale1

Portable Homes / Mobile Homes and Network Shares

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for