Syncing problem with network home folders

Deaar Community,
I recently obtained a Mac Mini Server. I had a problem syncing my iPhone after moving all my data to network home folders.
Everytime I got the following message:
"Syncing cannot be enabled on this computer"
"Multiple computers are logged in to this same network home folder."
"Please turn off syncing on all other computers..."
There were no other computers syncing into the same directory.
This turned out to be a wrong error message.
I solved the problem by turing off the firewall on the server.
That was strange. Although the firewall rules were set to allow all traffic within the local zone iTunes had a problem with its presence.

Please be also sure that the permissions for the files are set correctly. In my case it turned out that the permissions for the iTunes Library were set in a way that the directories were owned by the server administrator's account. I had to reset the owner.
I also feel that there is a bug in the permissions administration in snow leopard server. I ended up with files that had a lot of permissions entries which were completely identical.
i. e.
Angela read only
Steve read+write
Steve read+write
Steve read+write
everyone none
Stll, a different error occurs randomly, but I finally managed to completely sync the iPhone. The error message now says that the iPhone could not be synced because the sync server could not sync the iphone. (?! This is somewhat redundant.)

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Paul,
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We have InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator installed locally on all machines.
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This definitely sounds like something you might want to take up with Adobe Customer Support. (In case you didn't know, the people here are just other users, like yourself).
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IPhoto not showing up -- Network Home Folders on Windows server

When our users who have their home folder on a Windows server open iMovie, they can't access their iPhoto library within iMovie. The same is true for the 3rd party app, ComicLife. Is there something going wrong where the Windows server is screwing up whatever links the iPhoto library with other apps? Users who are on the Apple server are working just fine.
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For reference, this is any mac client on 10.4.9 with Networked home folders going to either Win2003 server or Mac Server 10.4.10.

In case anyone else is looking... This was being caused by connecting to the home folders on the windows server using AFP. Switching it to SMB fixed the problem.

Network home folders owned by (unknown) user.

I am seeing something strange happening and i will try and describe it as best as i can.
This is happening in a middle school with about 750 users, 150 emacs(10.3.9) and 1 xserve(10.4.?).
I am not sure if this is a capacity issue but it seems to happen when there are lots of users trying to log into the computers. There are several different work groups the students can choose from when they log in and at any one time there may be 60 to 100 users logged in with network home folders and 1 or 2 other auto mounting share points.
Occasionally a few users will not be able to log in. A closer look will show that they are able to get passed the login screen and choose a workgroup and actually log into a desktop environment but they are not able to access their home folder. If you try and access anything in their home folder you will get an error msg informing you that you do not have sufficient access privilages. Of course the documents folder that normally sits on the dock is displayed as a question mark, and trying to launch any application will fail as it cant access the prefs file stored in the users library folder in their network home folder.
There are a couple different scenarios i have observed when looking at the permission information on the home folders.
Scenario one: when i look at the permissions on the home folder using get info tool, the owner is a completely different user. Doing an ls -sl from the command line shows the same information.
Scenario two: when i look at the permissions on the home folder using the get info tool the owner is (unknown). Doing an ls -al from the command line will show the owner as being a number. I assume this is a uid number, and the number is usually a uid that does not show up in workgroup managers current list of users, and i assume this is why the get info tool reports the owner as being (unknown).
I can fix the home folder by using a chown -r but dont know why this is happening to begin with.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions.
I have done some research on google but have not come up with anything concrete.
Help
Mark
SD34

This is not a definitive answer, but you are certainly pushing the capabilities of a single XServe. As best I understand it, the XServe is really meant to be part of a deployment of OS X server in an environment such as yours. You should really have at least one replica server for authentication purposes and a separate device, such as an XServe RAID, or at least another server to house network home folders. You should at least consider getting another box, even a dual G5 or Mac pro, make it a replica, and split the home dirs between the new box and the XServe. Think about it. You have a lot of users authenticating a buncg of shares and at the same time a bunch of users zipping all sorts of big and little dats files (like office or appleworks files) as well as all the web browser chache files and whatever other cache files are flying around. That's an awful lot for the XServe's network connection, nevermind the read/writes on the HD.
So honestly, it would be really tough to tell if there;s just a bottleneck causing issues, or some other software/configuration error with that much traffic to a single server.
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Network accounts with local home folders

First of all sorry for my bad english.
I want to obtain network accounts with local home folders.
I have found this post very interesting to solve my problem.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2140595#2140595
Following this indications I have obtained it but I dont see the Public folder of any home folder from the network.
How I can solve this? I must share the Public folders manually? How? I have proven with SharePoints 3.5.4 and I have not obtained it.
Thanks
iMac Intel Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hi
Clients should be bound to Open Directory and be using the OD Master for their DNS. Launch WorkGroup Manager and authenticate to the LDAP node. If you have only a few Users you can do it at that Level if hundreds do it at Group Level. Select Preferences > Mobility. It's fairly obvious thereafter.
After the home folder has been created you can make that account a local administrator if you wish.
This assumes the Server has been configured as Advanced. Please don't take this advice if you've used anything else.
Tony

How to set up Open Directory Users with local home folders?

Hi folks,
i set up a Mac mini Server with the services DNS, DHCP, AFP and OpenDirectory running. Everything is working fine so far but i want my OpenDirectory Users to have their home folders locally on the clients harddisk. My Leopard clients are already bound to the directory but everytime i try to login the login window is shaking even when i use the Directory Administrator account. What am i doing wrong?
Thanks.

(Did you read my other reply? You need to make it a portable account for the caching of login credentials.)
With network homes and portable account enabled on a machine you always run from the locally stored homefolder on that machine.
This homefolder syncs with the server network home folder for that account.
If either of these folders get corrupt or unintentionally altered files (permission problems) somehow, there is risk of losing files, syncing problems and more (can take long time to sync at login/out, during even without corruption - I prefer gigabit cable to WiFi for this for obvious reasons).
You at least need to monitor storage space in both places. You don't want either to fill up the disk (worse on server because several users can have their folders corrupted at the same time). Working quota settings / account is probably a good thing.
And you probably need to decide what is synced : all folders or just some (and when / how often).
You either do this form the server (you decide) or let the user have some say or a mix of these two.
You might want to leave out the user's personal files (music, movies and such) and also depending on emaIl client used, maybe not sync email if the client saves it like Entourage does it, in big ever changing database files. Might be better to just backup the mailserver if IMAP based.
If a user puts other large files in their homefolder (often on the Desktop) they can fill up the server fast. DVD-projects anyone?
Mixing different versions server/client might not work too good either.
So having said that, when syncing works it can be really good and you can restore a machine/account fast with pretty recent data. You can if in a hurry even log in from another machine using the account network home folder, getting access to the synced folders/files.
Using Time Machine it's a one way "sync" (more like "duplicate changed and new files" - which I like) and you have to manually set TM settings on the client for what is going to be backed up and when. I do atleast don't know how to do it from/on the server. This "less intervention by the server" can be a good thing but if your users don't "behave" you might want to be in the drivers seat "saving them from themselves".
TM backups can grow fast and probably demands more user interaction when storage space is used up.
As with all "backup" configurations you probably want some rotating media backup of both network homes and/or TM backups so you can do a restore. Of these two, network homes are the more important one to backup "further".

Network Home Folders on NAS

hello all-
i have recently purchased a QNAP TS809U-RP. i want to move all my network home folders to it. here are the steps i have taken thus far:
1) created a new share on the QNAP via the QNAP web utility. the share is xServeData
2) created a folder called "Home" in the xServeData - this is where i want all the home folders to reside
3) went to Server Admin and created a new share for the "xServeData" share i created in the QNAP web utility
4) went to Workgroup Manager and created a test user called, oddly enough, "Test"
5) clicked the "Create Home Folder" for that user
when i look on the QNAP a Home folder is created called "Test" but with only 2 folders inside of it:
Library
Sites
when i go to one of the iMacs on the network i type the username and p/w for the user "Test" and the login starts but i get the error:
"You are unable to log in to the user account "Test" at this time
Logging in to the account failed because an error occurred."
when i go back and check the new "xServeData" share's permissions versus the permissions where the home folders currently reside (on Drive 2 in Bay 2 on the xServe) i see that the permissions are:
serveradmin, Allow, Read & Write, This folder
staff, Allow, Read & Write, This folder
others, Allow, Read Only, This Folder
on the new "xServeData" share these permissions are:
serveradmin, Allow, Read & Write, This folder
staff, Allow, NO ACCESS, This folder
others, Allow, NO ACCESS, This Folder
when i try and change the new share to match the old share and save it just reverts back to the "NO ACCESS" for staff and others. i am sure this is probably what is causing the user "Test" from logging in but i don't know how to solve the issue. i am new to NAS's and am certainly not the most advanced OS X Server user. i have this in my home and my users are my family. this is really more of a hobby but i love to learn and play with this stuff.
if someone has any experience setting up Network Home Folders on a NAS and hopefully on a QNAP NAS i would sure appreciate your help and knowledge to resolve this. it seems that i am very close but that i am just overlooking one or two issues......

I am in the same boat. I would like to create mobile accounts but never sync. This is like having a local account but this way the password is in sycn with OD. Then the Time Machine can do the backups to the home folder on the NAS instead of using home synching.
How do we get the NAS box folders available to WGM? I need to know what to enter in the home folder section and be able to hit create home now and save.
This will be using Snow Leopard 10.6 od master.
Lannie

Network Home Folders - Sometimes

Is there a way to have network home folders sometimes?
Here is the situation. (all servers and clients are at 10.3.9, but could be upgraded to 10.4.x)
In a school there is a 29 unit eMac lab and an iBook cart. The students each have a home folder on the server. When they log in to an eMac they use their OD/LDAP username and password. The OSX server authenticates them and then they use their network home folder. This works just fine.
But when they use the iBooks, they are using Airport to connect to the network. Network home folders are too slow to work over a wireless network, so they have to log in using a local account and then mount their network home folder to save files.
What I would like to do is have them login to the iBooks with their OD/LDAP information so that they can be authenticated using OD/LDAP but not use home folders when using the iBooks. (I could then put their home folders in the dock)
Is this possible?
Thanks
too many to list Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Considered, but won't work for this application.
The students use different computers at different
times. For instance the question is about users on
eMacs some of the time and iBooks some of the time.
So they would have at least 2 different computers and
many people might use either of them at a different
time. So a single computer could have many, many home
folders.
Just to press the issue: is there a reason this is a problem (disk space, for example, or security)? Because the whole point of PHDs is that you'll be getting synchronization even when multiple machines are involved. If you're worried about home directories piling up, you could implement a cron job to clean them. I'm not trying to suggest that PHDs really will work in your instance--just trying to suggest possibilities.
In any event, it IS possible to modify your users' home directory settings on a client-by-client basis. You could, for example, have your users' accounts set to use network home folders for your wired machines, but override that setting on your iBooks to point to homes on the client. To do that:
1. Open Directory Access on your iBook, select your LDAPv3 configuration, and edit it (Services pane > LDAPv3 > Configure, select it in the next window and click Edit. If you've checked "Use DHCP-supplied LDAP Server" you'll need to uncheck that and create a configuration for your server; consult the server documentation for more information.
2. When you click the Edit button, you'll get a window for the selected configuration, with tabs for "Connection" and "Search & Mappings." Click the Search & Mappings tab.
3. In the Record Types and Attributes pane on the left, click the disclosure triangle next to Users, and do two things:
- Select "HomeDirectory" and delete it.
- Select "NFSHomeDirectory" in the left pane, and replace the corresponding "homeDirectory" entry in the right pane with the following: #/Users/$uid$. Then, click OK to save your changes.
4. Reboot the client, and log in as one of your network users. Here's what should happen: on this particular client, Directory Access will still log your users in with the account settings on the server, except the HomeDirectory attribute will be reset with the value /Users/<short user name>. That's what the NFSHomeDirectory line does: the sharp sign tells Directory Access to ignore the attribute in the user's server account, and overwrite it with the string that follows. The $uid$ tells Directory Access to substitute the field with that value (the LDAP uid field). So, for user John Smith, whose short name is smithj, the client will create a folder called smithj in the folder /Users, which is on the local client.
You could in theory use this technique to place the home folders anywhere on your client (like in /tmp), but it's best to use the default /Users folder unless you have strong reasons not to.
The advantage of this scheme is that you only set up the Directory Access preferences this way on the clients where you want to have local homes--e.g., your iBooks. Once you've correctly configured the Directory Access preferences and have verified that everything works, you can copy the folder /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService to your other iBook clients, so you don't have to go through this process on every machine.
There is one caveat, however. Configuring Directory Access this way will effect ANY user who logs in to your iBook--that is, any network user on your server. You can't set this up differently for different sets of users on your server--for any client workstation, all users on the server get treated the same. This is presumably what you want, given that you don't want to server network homes over wireless, but it's important to understand the implications of what you're doing.
The instructions above assume that you're familiar with setting up configurations in Directory Access. If not, you might want to read up on it.
Power Macintosh G5 1.8/PowerBook G4 15 1.42 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Network home folders, collaboration sharepoint and Microsoft Word 2008

I'm hoping someone who knows how Microsoft Word 2008 works on network volumes can shed some light on our situation.
We run a small managed network with about 15 leopard clients and a leopard server. We've got two sharepoints, a "homes" share for network home folders, and an "Office" share with our shared office document folders.
Several times a week, users will encounter a situation where Microsoft Word 2008 will claim that a file is open by another user, or that the file can be opened in "read only" mode, even though the file is not in use. Naturally, the problem cannot be replicated when I am present.
### My Hypothesis ###
My users are in the habit of quickly borrowing machines from other users to pull up documents in the "office" share by using the "connect as" button. So, for example, userA is logged in to her machine (and is thus connected to the network home folder on the server). userB comes along and borrows her machine -- without logging out, will connect to the shared office folder, pull up and edit/print a document, etc. We're not currently auto mounting the office share.
I know that Microsoft Word creates lock folders located in the .TemporaryItems folder at the root level of the "office" share. The folders are named "folder.xxxx", where xxxx is the userid of the account that created the lock folder. Everyone uses a network account, so everyone has a unique userID. If I list the .TemporaryItems folder using the CLI, i can see lock folders that are several days or a week old. So Word doesn't seem to be cleaning up after itself immediately, at least not always.
So my question: when userB connects to the office share on a borrowed machine (logged in to the client machine using the network home folder of userA), is it possible that word will now create lock folders for userB, and will be unable to clean up lock folders created by userA?
Anyone have other ideas for investigating the "file in use" problem?

Switched user back to the network home folder and adjusted the MS Word preferences so that the autorecovery files would be stored on the local client machine. There doesn't seem to be a comparable setting in the Excel preferences.
My initial testing suggests that this has reduced how often this problem occurs, but has not eliminated it. I tested by repeatedly opening and closing a couple of different word files in rapid succession -- i was able to replicate the "file opens as read only" problem occasionally.
I've talked to Apple server support about this issue. While they were helpful, they didn't have an explanation or solution for this problem. There are a number of postings in the microsoft mactopia discussion boards site where people report similar problems.

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.

Yosemite Mail still has sync problems with Gmail - any solutions?

I notice that Yosemite Mail still has sync problems with Gmail. After running for some hours, I noticed there were 6 emails in my Gmail account that had not synced over the past hour.
In the meanwhile, for safety's sake (don't want to miss emails!) I'm back to Mailplane. But I wonder if anybody knows of a solution to this long term problem first introduced in Mavericks. Works fine in iOS Mail though.
Thanks,
doug

I don't think we'll ever have a "best of both worlds" Doug. I've used Gmail since the week it launched the first beta in 2004, and it's always been a bit of a love-hate relationship for me (mostly love). With the demise of the Google Notifier for Mac, I went with Mailplane, but even it has problems. Like when I see my iPhone update with new mail and I'm looking at Mailplane and it won't update at times with even a forced refresh. I often have to close/reopen it to see new messages. But, it's hard to live without my Google Calendar only a tab click away, one of the primary reasons I use Mailplane, that plus changing view zoom sticks with Mailplane and won't with Gmail.
For years I've thought Gmail labels were the perfect filing solution, but over the past few weeks I've been analyzing just how much I really use that feature, and for me...it's not all that much. I think I could simplify my life by putting everything into appropriate folders (as in all other email apps). Apple doesn't realize just how much money they're losing by not allowing people to use private domains with iCloud mail...which I would do in a heartbeat just because it would work perfectly with Mail.app. I would pay even more than I currently pay Google for this solution with Google Apps Business. So, I'm actually on the verge of moving my private domain to the best email service I can find and then using it with Mail.app. The problem here, of course, is I'll lose the best spam control on the planet (Gmail). So, as you say, there simply is not a "best" solution for all these things. I'll at least try a new email service first with some other domain to see how I like it before moving my primary email.
Lastly, the other thing that incenses me is synching of flags between iOS and Apple Mail. It works fine between Gmail and iOS Mail, since all I care about is whether a message is starred/flagged or not. But using Apple Mail, when I flag a message it will not show as flagged in their own iOS Mail, which is incomprehensible, given they built both apps.
If you find a great solution or discover anything new...please post it here, Doug. Thanks.

ITunes library keeps disappearing with network home directories&MacBookPro

I've been using iTunes with network home directories for years. My wife & I have network home directories on our Macs and we can log into any of our Macs with our network home directories. The actual iTunes Music folder is also on the network server and shared between our user accounts.
This has always worked fine with my G4 cube, my PowerMac G5 and my PowerBook. As long as I only open iTunes on one machine at a time, I can open it on any of my machines and everything works great.
However, with my new MacBook Pro, my library keeps disappearing and I have to reimport it from the XML file every couple of days. Seems to erase my iPod Shuffle too at the same time (maybe it's triggered by plugging in my iPod).
Any ideas? Is there an endian issue with the library?
I can't figure out how to get any feedback on what's happening. Is there a debug log file I can enable?
PowerMac G5, PowerBook, MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I've got one better...I imported all my CDs onto iTunes. Then I upgraded. Here is what happened...All songs remained listed, however when I would click onto a song, a ! mark appears in front of the check mark and a window pops up saying "song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" Well this occurred on 75% of my songs. Apple info led me to believe I could use my iPod as a hard drive. So I tried hooking up the pod to my computer. Well, from 3688 songs, I was down to just over 200, so I guess that is an even higher percentage.
What iTunes did was made a folder in "my music" with years 1955 to 2007. In those different years folders are the CDs that were released in that year. They have to be opened, each individual song, and re entered to itunes. All this I discovered on my own. No help from Apple. Not to mention what a royal pain in the *** process, which I am still in the process of doing. And don't even get me started with Artwork

Syncing problem with network home folders

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