Refresh mobile accounts every week

Is there a way to refresh mobile accounts every week, lets say Mondays?
I have 2 mobile accounts that are for back up and I want them to be new and fresh every Monday.
Is there a way to accomplish this?
Thank you.
Server 10.4.9

Ditto. I am having the same problem. I don't understand why ~/Library/Application Support/ doesn't sync. There are two entries in the exclusion list, but none of them would prevent Mail, iCal, AddressBook, or iChat from syncing their configuration (.plist) files.
The only reason I bought this Mini Server was to manage these portable home directories (or Mobile Accounts) so that my family could login on any Mac and have their account all setup with everything configured and files available as if they were on their primary Mac.
Really a bummer!

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Decommissioned a file server, but every mobile account in the place is still trying to connect to it on login!

A couple of months ago we decommissioned the 10.4.11 xserve that was serving as our LDAP server and home directory server for mobile accounts. We migrated all of that to a newer 10.6.8 xserve. It was a fairly rough migration, but we've pretty much sorted it out except for one last annoyance: when you look at System Preferences->Accounts->Login Items for all of our mobile accounts, every single client is still trying to mount an afp share on the old server. Logging in takes FOREVER because the connection needs to time out, so now my users are no longer logging out/in as often as they should, and so their Home Sync's are getting old.
When you go to the client's Preferences, the line referencing the old server share is still there, but the minus sign is greyed out so the item cannot be deleted.
The Kind is listed as "unknown" and there is a grey warning triangle next to it.
This is clearly some sort of template/Preference that is hardcoded to the old name, and whatever file this is got moved to the new server (which has a different name and different numeric IP address.) Because even the BRAND NEW users that I have created since after "pdc04.hgbc.com" disappeared are trying to log in to the non-existent share on the non-existent server, too!
I have tried running grep on the entire disk on one of the clients looking for the string "pdc04", and updated everything that I found using vi directly on the files. I have tried running grep on select directory trees on the new file server looking for pdc04. In my grep on the client, I found the string in
/Library/Managed Preferences/user/loginwindow.plist
/Library/Managed Preferences/user/complete.plist
but searching all of the logingwindow.plist and complete.plist files on the new server comes up with nothing.
Does anyone have any idea where the template or preference or plist is on the server so that I can delete or update the file with the new host name?

I think that Grant is on the right track -- but the problem is that whatever file that pdc04's Server Manager wrote into is not available to pdc's Server Manager to edit or even display.
We upgraded mostly by turning off the G5 10.4 xserve and unplugging the fiber-channel RAID (with user accounts on it) and plugging the RAID into a fiber-channel card on the new (to us) Nehalem 10.6 xserve, which we did after using Migration Assistant between the machines. Then we had various and sundry problems, and we ended up moving all of the mobile account directories to the internal RAID on the new server.
Clearly there is a file somewhere that acts as a template for mobile accounts and it refers to the old machine but its been moved to the new machine.
Only two of the mobile accounts have directories in the /Library/Managed Preferences folder. One of them, ironically, is mine, and my account hasn't worked right since we went to the new server.

Entourage User Account Diables Itself Every Week or So

Running Mail Service on Apple OS X server package 10.4.4 (problem also was on 10.4.3) we have two customers whose log in account becomes disabled every week or so, as though they had made too many erroneous attempts to log in. We reset their account, and they're good to connect for a few more days, then they contact us to say they can't log in, we check the workgroup manager and, sure enough, the log in permission has disabled itself.
Anyone else seeing this? They are also Mac users, too. They thought they "needed" the features of Entourage. No other email customers using this mail server are complaining at all, although probably no others are using Microsoft Entourage.
We're pretty suspicious this is an issue between Microsoft Entourage and the Open Directory. Occasionally we see one of these users logged in twice at the same time on the server connected users monitor screen.

Here is the error I get, if it helps.

My account asks me to change my password every week for no reason and i have different security questions for the same account

My account asks me to change my password every week for no reason and i have different security questions for the same account

Does the iPod connect to other networks?
Does the iPod see the network?
Any error messages?
Do other devices now connect?
Did the iPod connect before?
Try the following to rule out a software problem:
- Reset the iOS device. Nothing will be lost
Reset iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
- Power off and then back on the router
- Reset network settings: Settings>General>Reset>Reset Network Settings
- iOS: Troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and connections
- Wi-Fi: Unable to connect to an 802.11n Wi-Fi network
- iOS: Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points
- Try changing the security on the router. Start with no securty as a test.
- Restore from backup. See:
iOS: How to back up
- Restore to factory settings/new iOS device.
If still problem make an appointment at the Genius Bar of an Apple store since it appears you have a hardware problem.
Apple Retail Store - Genius Bar

Setting up mobile accounts to delete after logout issues

Running a network with about 2,000 users. Due to the amount of time to login the sever at each workstation we set up about half of them to sync and to be mobile account within workgroup manager. We have the settings as followed for the sync....
create mobile account when users log in
and making network home and default sync setting.
delete mobile account after 0 hours (originally set to 5 days)
delete only after successful sync
for the rules we are using preference sync always, but not in background. Same for home sync rule.
So at first the users were logging in very fast and working great, the 1st 3 or 4 days we set up the delete mobile accounts to delete in 5 days. 2 days later we changed it to 0. in that time being about 300+ users logged in with the setting set to 5 .about 1 week later after changing the account expiry from 5 days to 0 hours most users started to get sync errors (from 10, 200+ errors) we looked into it a bit and noticed that under root/users...the users home directory were not being deleted fully, the entire folder is suppose to be deleted but instead it was only deleting downloads, pictures, videos ect, and it was leaving about 3 folders within its home. (documents, desktop and something else)
we noticed once that happened to a user, when they would to log out and try to log into the same work startion we would get an error stating
"unable to create mobile account, there was a problem while creating or accessing /user (then says users name)"
This issue is due to that work group manager is not fully deleting the synced account. If we go in as root and deleted the users home in HD/users, they user was able to log back in with no problem and it recreates its mobile home and works perfectly.
but as of now we have a hand full of users with this issue. please advise.
we are using workgroup manager version (10.6 ) 361.1.1

Hi
All local users have rwx and no permissions for groups or others on Desktop, Documents etc. as they should.
Mobile users have rwx and groups and others have rwx also on every folder. 06hstest is a mobile user
drwxr-xr-x 12 06hstest SGCSD\do 408 Feb 1 12:48 .
drwxrwxr-t 11 root admin 374 Feb 2 10:09 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 06hstest SGCSD\do 3 Jan 19 13:37 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rwxrwxrwx 1 06hstest SGCSD\do 6148 Jan 29 11:51 .DS_Store
drwxrwxrwx 6 06hstest SGCSD\do 204 Feb 1 12:48 Desktop
drwxrwxrwx 26 06hstest SGCSD\do 884 Feb 1 12:48 Documents
drwxrwxrwx 11 06hstest SGCSD\do 374 Feb 1 12:48 Library
drwxrwxrwx 4 06hstest SGCSD\do 136 Feb 1 12:48 Movies
drwxrwxrwx 4 06hstest SGCSD\do 136 Feb 1 12:48 Music
drwxrwxrwx 5 06hstest SGCSD\do 170 Feb 1 12:48 Pictures
drwxrwxrwx 4 06hstest SGCSD\do 136 Feb 1 12:48 Public
drwxrwxrwx 7 06hstest SGCSD\do 238 Feb 1 12:48 Sites
Thanks,
Martha

IPhoto + Mobiles accounts = Huge Problems - Please Help!

I administer an Apple XServe on a primary school with leopard fully updated.
We have about 20 macbook laptops which login using the wireless network and a number of hard wired iMacs.
Five of those laptops are being used by teachers who want to take their laptops at home. So I have created mobile accounts for them. But since I've done that we've been having endless problems with syncing!
I have configured them to sync every 10minutes and also during login and logout.
Even if they have synced already the login/logout times are extremely long and during syncing iPhoto keeps duplicating it's libraries!!!
I have tried to completely remove the network accounts and do them from scratch but eventually the problems come up.
I am not thinking to completely disable the mobile accounts, create a local account for them and ask them to use USB sticks to transfer files to their network directories!
Any experts on mobile accounts please help!

I just do sync ONLY at log out (as all other times the process is toooo slow and gets in the way and the process is always painfully slow(that's why I leave the building) - the only time I do a sync at log in, is when I have been using my laptop over the weekend for example and I need changes on desktop. That is not a fun Monday morning as its - 1. log out laptop (wait ages for checking - sync the few small changes I made) 2. log in desktop (wait ages for checking - sync the few small changes I made) - sometimes it would be better to use a USB stick !
I also noted that the iPhoto library checking is slow and if you ever open iPhoto and even if you do not do anything the entire library will sync again, I think this is due to it being a package, much like iCal backup files (they are a mega pain)
getting right what you do and do not sync is an art in itself, but I need to sync iPhoto library however I am very careful and only open iPhoto now when I need to.
I continue to be amazed at how slow checking is, I am sure this should be super fast (I heard it was in 10.4)
anyway im over to Snow Leopard this week I wonder if it will be any better

Mobile account disabled unable to re-enable

First some background. We have an Open Directory Master setup on Snow Leopard Server 10.6.2. I have a default password policy of 5 attempts and the user account is locked out. I am in the process of binding Snow Leopard clients to Open Directory. All of my users are on laptops so I was setting them up with mobile accounts. First I would bind the machine to Open Directory, then I would have the user login with their network user account. Next using System Preferences I would convert the currently logged in network user account to a mobile account. I assumed I needed to do this so the user would be able to login to their machine while the server was unavailable.
My issue is that the using a second machine the user locked out their account. I re-enabled the account in WGM, but the user cannot get into their laptop. I use WGM to view the local directory and it show the local cached account as disabled. Unfortunately there is no way using the GUI to re-enable the cached local account. Also using dscl I see that AuthenticationAuthority has ;DisabledUser; as the first value before LocalCachedUser.
It seems I don't fully understand how mobile accounts work. I assumed that a cached version of the account would be created on the client machine for use when the Directory Server was unavailable. I thought that when the Directory Server was available that it would take precedence over the cached copy. Is this not how it works?
Also my attempts do edit the user account using dscl to remove the ;DisabledUser; value were not successful. Is there an easy way to re-enable this account?

Mr Beardsley wrote:
I think what happens, at least in our office is that after the 24 hour period for Kerberos people will have to enter their password again for things like iCal, iChat, etc. If they mistype their password, and save it in keychain, I think it can rapid fire try to authenticate many times without any visual feedback and lock out the account. Reactivating in workgroup manager handles the account in OD, but unfortunately the local copy of mobile user account doesn't see or honor that the account has been reactivated on the server.
I was doing the same thing as you deleting the mobile user account on the system, but that was getting to be a pain as I would have to remake the mobile user account and the user would lose their picture every time. After I discovered the pwpolicy command I have tested it several times and deleting the user account is no longer necessary. Just re-enable the account in OD, then run the command I put above to re-enable on the client.
What I would love to see happen is that the client machine check with OD to see if the account is enabled/disabled then update itself to be in the some condition. Until then it's running a command on the client to get the account working again.
Mr. B,
I think you're right about all of this. I'm experiencing this too with only one mobile user. This user is in a different office all week. Then on Fridays he's here at our HQ. His laptop is set to sync every 3 hours. For some reason it is at this syncing stage that his account becomes disabled. I think the HomeSync function may be requesting a password that the user is entering incorrectly because they get confused as to what password to enter. I'm not sure if they are entering incorrectly once, 3 times, 10 times or what. They are frustrated and so am I.
However, the pwpolicy command you provided DOES re-enable their local mobile account and it is available after restarting. So thanks for that!
We have several different passwords that for any given user (SLS network account, file-server, email, plus their keychain password).
Anyone have a tried & tested "user-friendly solution" to keeping these all in sync after our 2-month password expiration?

Having trouble disabling PHD (mobile accounts)

Hi,
I'm using SL server and clients, with a 'magic triangle' configuration. I created a group in Worhgroup Manager with some mobility preferences assigned (create mobile account, sync home folder on login, log-off and background)
I wanted to turn this off, so deleted the group in Workgroup manager. But the users that were in this group still behaving like mobile accounts.
Is there a folder/file in their home directory I need to trash in order to refresh the workgroup settings?
I'm a bit confused!
Thanks
Tom

Hi,
I'm having the same problem - same error at least. I haven't migrated any users, but this is a fresh 10.4.11 Server. All clients are 10.5.6. I'm not using mobile users. My users have home directories on the server. Every user receives the error you describe. I've scoured the web, found several suggestions, but no descriptive answers.
There are many people with this issue, but it seems that once they get it resolved they're not posting solutions. Or, at least not clear ones.
The steps I've followed in Work Group Manager (WGM) include:
1) Insuring that the Users folder can be mounted and can be shared.
2) That for each user's home folder, the permission are set using the access control list (ACL).
3) That the WGM computer lists include your machines and that they are set to always manage.
4) Unbind the clients from the Open Directory (OD) server, clear the Directory Utility (DU) preferences on each client. Reboot. Rebind to OD.
5) The server is responding normally when checking DU. Users can authenticate when using client-based home directories.
Have you reached a conclusion?
Thank you.
Scott
Server Details
OS X Server 10.4.11
Client Details
OS X 10.5.6
Message was edited by: Encabler

Mobile Accounts: Manual Sync works, Automated Sync Does Not

I've got a small office network with about 10 users. Each have mobile accounts under Tiger (server and clients) and they've been working flawlessly for years.
All of a sudden we've noticed that for some users the background sync is no longer working. If they choose "Sync Home Now" from the menu the sync runs else. Otherwise, it does not run at all.
All background syncing is set (via WGM) to run every 30 minutes.
What is the best way to debug this?
Thanks!
scotto

if you configure mobile prefs to popup a dialog to confirm creating a mobile account on new machines, train them to choose "no," and they'll login with network homes on other machines.

TS2446 i have a problem in my account every time i want to install application from app Store on my iphone a message shows that my Apple ID has been disabled, what is the problem? what can i do ?

i have a problem in my account every time i want to install application from app Store on my iphone a message shows that my Apple ID has been disabled, i creat a new password and still that message shoes ,what is the problem ?can you help me please???!!!!

If your account is disabled then you might be able to re-enable it via this page : http://appleid.apple.com, then 'reset your password'
You might then need to log out of your account on your phone by tapping on your id in Settings > iTunes & App Store and then log back in so as to 'refresh' the account on it
If that doesn't fix it then you might need to contact iTunes Support : http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/ - click on Contact iTunes Store Support on the right-hand side of the page

Cannot login with mobile account when server is switched off

Hello all,
First of all, my condolences to the Jobs family.
OK. On with my problem. I apologise in advance if this has been answered before. I've trawlled through various boards and I can't seem to find an answer.
I'll try to keep it brief.
I've set up a mac mini with lion server. Done all necessary updates.
I have a lion macbook which is the client.
On server, created an Open Directory etc..
I created 2 mobile network accounts on the server. Set preferences etc.. Added both to workgroup.
Added the client to the domain in system prefs login options.
Logged into the 2 accounts on the client. All working well. Can see my mounts. Mobile accounts created successfully and syncing working.
So, the problem I have is, when I shutdown the server, my mobile accounts on the client disappear. Also, the login screen states, 'Network accounts are unavailable.'
I've been looking at this for a week now and it's driving me mad. I must have missed something - can anyone shed any light on this please?
With thanks, Paul.

oh well - gave up and reinstalled lion server.
GROAN!

Mobile Account Error Setting Up Leopard Client, createmobileaccount error.

Hi all. I posted this discussion under Portable Home Directories, but that is unfortunately a subcategory of Max OS X Server v10.4 Tiger and this is strictly a Leopard issues, so I'm reposting here.
Just following up on an earlier thread regarding mobile home accounts. Thought I'd post a new entry as the other one has been "answered".
I've just recently upgraded a slew of clients and a server to Leopard and have been trying to enable mobile accounts on existing network home accounts. When I set this as a Preference using Workgroup Manager, nothing happens on the clients. When I try to create a mobile account directly on the client while logged in as the network user, I get a standard error (The mobile account could not be created.) every time after it asks to log out and enter the user password in order to create the mobile account.
So, I followed the steps in this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1234051&tstart=0
For the account "leedale" logged in using a network home directory, entered the Terminal command as follows:
/System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources/createmobileac count -vsn leedale -h /Users/leedale
createmobileaccount built Oct 2 2007 22:44:49
verbose output on.
user name = "leedale"
home path = "/Users/leedale"
user password = "(null)"
prompt for password = FALSE
encrypt new home = FALSE
create as external account = TRUE
home sync new account = TRUE
sync URL = "(null)"
MCXCCacheMCXRecordAndGraph(): existingMCXRecord record setValues:forAttribute:dsAttrTypeNative:cachedauthpolicy == -14120 (Unable to set value(s) for dsAttrTypeNative:cachedauthpolicy in record leedale.)
MCXCCreateMobileAccount failed to create account. Error = -14120 (MCXCCacheMCXRecordAndGraph failed). Cleaning up mobile account record.
2007-11-18 17:15:19.831 createmobileaccount551:10b ### Error:-14120 File:/SourceCache/Admin/Admin-423/DSRecord.m Line:484
mobile account could not be created: -14120 (Unable to set value(s) for dsAttrTypeNative:cachedauthpolicy in record leedale.)
Any suggestions?

Hi,
The namespace you are using for creating client proxy might not be available for consumption(i.e. it might not be published) or there is no connectivity to the source system so namespace is not available.
Try checking connection.
Hoping it helps..
Regards,
Komal
Edited by: Komal Lakhwani on Feb 8, 2010 4:31 PM

Mobile account setup stops syncing and acts like a network user

Mobile account setup stops syncing and acts like a network user system under ODM
Setup: Mobile laptop users authenticating against an ODM. Every user has a networked home directory on an Xserve. The whole setup is 10.4 (client and server). All systems run a standard image. Most effected systems have been re-imaged since the onset of the issue.
Issue: Some of the users are not syncing properly every time. It is as if the system forgets it is a mobile system and reverts to using the User's network home (instead of saving to /Users and syncing). If the user is effected, the system will not even accept cached credentials if they are off network. This forgetfulness does not seem to follow any pattern and does not effect all of our mobile users.
In mucking about trying to find a cause to this issue I ran across an oddity in all effected systems Netinfo database. The users are each listed twice. Each entry has the same username, short name and UID. Also, In each case one record looks wrong... this varies somewhat from user to user, but in each case there is marked difference in the record's contents. Deleting the incomplete record in Netinfo manager seems to solve the issue (seems, as we are very early in testing this).
Anyone have a clues as to where this double came from? The only lead so far is that it looks like the users having issues pre-date the use of mobile accounts. At some time they all had local accounts that authenticated against the ODM but never synced or had networked home directories. The pool of users who just got laptops (and thus never had a local account) seem unaffected so far.
Also, what is the best way to browse the ODM master to find these duplicates?

I have a similar issue with computers bound to Active Directory. Users occasionally have a problem logging into their computers even though their account is fine. Logging in as Admin and running netinfo manager always shows duplicate user accounts. Deleting the one that says disabled always clears up the issue. I'd like to find a startup script that would delete the disabled account, thus preventing the issue.

Mobile Account Preferences visible on Menubar for Network Accounts

On Mobile Accounts (setup with Profile Manager), acting as network account (home folder in server), the mobile account preferences are shown on the menubar. In addion, it says "last home sync" incomplete. Both are wrong according to my understanding.
However it makes sense - and it if the case - if the account is really working as mobile account with local home folder on a e.g. macbook.
Does anyone has the same issue?

I have the same issue. No fix yet.
One of my machines has joined the network and seems to be ok in almost every way...clearly with the exception of this way.
I will post if / when I find a solution.
W

Mobile Accounts: Sync new accounts first time only.

When a user logs into a computer for the first time it is set to create a mobile account, however we don't use home directory syncing because the typical size of our 200 users' home directories is over 100Gb which makes syncing home directories not viable.
It would be very handy, though, to have it sync the first time only at login so that our user directory template is automatically copied over which will save a lot of time setting up new users.
Accoring to Apple's User Management v10.5 documentation on page 203:
+"To initially sync local and network homes so that the network home folder replaces the local home folder, choose “Create home with default sync settings."+
(This refers to Workgroup Manger -> Preferences -> the Mobility pane -> Account Creation -> Creation tab)
After testing, though, it is quite clear that this does not work - at least on my setup. I can get it to work by going to the Rules tab in the Mobility pane and ticking the sync at login and logout, but this syncs every time on both login and logout, which is not what I want to achieve.
Any ideas?

I also mentioned, that some Safari-Extensions I installed on the iMac are missing now on my iMac-Profile. I also mentioned, that some settings for 1Password are reset to default values.

Refresh mobile accounts every week

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