Users and Remote Home Directories

I have a lab of brand new 24" iMacs running 10.5.4 set up to authenticate to our 10.5.4 Server which is running Open Directory. When I log in as myself, the iMac logs in fine, I get my Home Directory from the server. Everything is happy. If I log in as a Student, the computer hangs on the login screen. I either have to use ARD to Restart the computer or I have to pull the plug. Here's where it gets weird. If I log in as myself, then log off and log in as a student, it works. The student gets their Home Directory from the Server and everything is happy again. It only seems to hang if the Student is the first one to log into the computer.
The only difference I've been able to find is that my Home Directory lives under /Users on the server, where a Student's home directory would be under the folder for their class. For example a Senior would have a Home Directory in /Users/2009. Each class folder is set to share out with the same permissions as Users, and they all show up in Workgroup Manager as being options on the Home tab. Is there something I need to know about enabling Automount on multiple shares? Or can anyone else out there think of something else to explain this behavior.
Thanks in advance.

As far as I know, its buggy software. If your school has an Apple tech support contract, you might try calling or emailing Apple to ask about this problem.

Similar Messages

Update from 10.5.6 to 10.5.8 and lost all users and their home directories

My server has been working flawlessly for many months. I did the upgrade to 10.5.6 and everything has been fine. I decided to do the software update to 10.5.8. When it was finished I could not log in as admin or anyone else. I finally got in as root...then it gave me an error in Workgroup Manager. Said I was not logged in and there was an error of -14008.
All my users are gone and so is their home directories....I hate to say it but this is ridiculous...doing a simple update and losing all the users? I expect this from Windows but not my xSERVER.
Does anyone have a fix to correct this? I really hate having to tell all the users tomorrow morning a simple update wiped all their data.
Carl

Hi
I saw your issue and I feel your pain. I did the same upgrade path to 10.6 and found that I had no users!. This is not your typical apple upgrade, the same as all other 10-X from day one. I cheated and used a new drive as I feel that upgrades may cause issues and I also used that as an opportunity to upgrade to a larger hard drive. After booting up on the new system with the upgraded drive I found the same issue to be true. I used the original drive, modified all my users to allow my new admin account to have rights to a user that I called 'move' on the old system. I booted up the old system modified all the users to allow user 'move' then I copied them to the new directory I set up that I called 'move' on the old drive, The next step I set up a new user 'move' on the new system drive and copied all the data from the old system drive 'move' to the new system drive 'move' I created all of my users on the new system drive. I set up all of my user accounts with a simple password 123456 on the new system I copied the users to there new directory. You could restore your backup on spare drive or an external drive with the old OS loaded. Postits on all the users monitors for Monday morning and... grumbling users with all of the data from Friday, get KrispyCreams and leave by the coffee pot [this step i forgot]. The users will talk about how nice it was that you brought doughnuts and not how there login is messed up [ha ha....}
I know that this is not an elegant or a quick solution but it worked for me and my 36 user accounts. If you know Unix script or Python or Apple script the procedures would be faster as you could batch the whole mess.
Hope this helps and good luck.

Key-based SSH Authentication and AFP Home Directories

I'm setting up some users with AFP home directories (hosted on an Xserve, with a couple of G5 towers as Open Directory clients). When logging in on the console on a G5 tower, the home directories work fine. The users can SSH into the Xserve using SSH key authentication. However, the users can not SSH into the G5 towers using SSH key authentication, and are instead asked for passwords - presumably because the AFP home directory is mounted with guest access (and thus the keys are unreadable) before the password is entered.
Is there a known workaround for this? A different way of setting up the home directory mounting? I don't particularly want to go the mobile home directory route, because (among other things), as far as I know, mobile home directories only sync when a user logs into the GUI. If that's not the case (that is, if they will sync when a user logs into the machine with SSH), then I guess that would be a reasonable solution.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

That was just speculation on my part; I'm not sure exactly what's happening. I do know that until the user authenticates, the entire automount is mounted with guest access... and that the user can't authenticate until the key file can be read. It may be the case that I was just encountering some transient failure or the like, however.

IPhoto '11 and network home directories

Hi,
We are using iPhoto '11 and network home directories which live on a SMB file server. When a user attempts to run iPhoto they get the following error: "Warning. The library could not be opened because the file system of the library's volume is unsupported."
iPhoto '09 works fine in our environment, and if the library is relocated to the Macintosh HD > Users > Shared directory it can be loaded. This appears to be a new bug in iPhoto '11. Am i correct?

iPhoto was never designed for a network environment. It's low end user application. If you want an image management application this is designed from networks and multi users you'll need a DAM (digital asset management) application like Media Expression.
You can learn about EM and other DAM apps at The DAM Forum where those applications are discussed and evaluated by professional photographers.
You can request adding a new feature to iPhoto via http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html.
OT

Multiple simutaneously logged in users accessing AFP home directories?

Hi,
Many of our problems are described in this guy's blog:
http://alblue.blogspot.com/2006/08/rantmac-migrating-from-afp-to-nfs.html
The basic capability we want is to have multiple simultaneously logged in users to have access to their AFP mounted home directory, which is configured in a sane, out-of-the box setup using WGM and Server Admin.
Multiple user access could take the form of FUS (fast user switching), or simply allowing a user to SSH into a machine that another user is already logged into and expect to be able to manipulate the contents of her home directory.
From my extensive searches, I have no reason to believe this is currently possible with 10.4 Server and AFP.
(here's the official word from apple: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25581)
I've read that using NFS home directories will work, though.
I want to believe that Apple has a solution for this by now (it's been almost a year since we first had difficulty), or at least a sanctioned workaround. If Apple doesn't have one, maybe someone else has come up with something clever. I find it hard to believe that more people haven't wanted this capability! (not being able to easily search the discussion boards doesn't help, though...)
Thanks for your help!
Adam

Parallels Issue. Track at http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=135585

Users on network home directories hang after sleep

Hi,
I have the following problem: I have a 10.5 server with network home directories. I can login from Snow Leopard (10.6.1) however whenever the machine goes to sleep and comes back from sleep, the user hangs then if you wait a bit then it will come with the message that the share has been disconnected and it asks you to manually unmount. It will stay there forever. When you click disconnect, the system will unmount and remount the home directory but in the mean time, Mail will have reported disk i/o errors in the logs and throw errors (ranging from type in your password to 'rebuild index').
Going through the log files (and verbosity high) it seems that when going to sleep, the system doesn't unmount the network home directory. After it wakes up from sleep it attempts to unmount the home directory share which off course fails because it's in use and then it locks up, after you click disconnect, it says "spins reported" in the logs and goes on with remounting the shares.
The issue doesn't happen if the user is local. If anybody has an idea as to how this works or if they have it working, please let me know. I have tried just about anything. AFP shares, NFS shares, I have tried with or without the intr, nolocks, locallocks mount options - they all have the same issue. I have even tried another Mac Mini with a fresh install of Snow Leopard.

I found a possible cause and solution.
This has been on 10.6.1 with Mac Mini's. Then we got a new Mac Pro with 10.6 out of the (Apple) factory which I updated to 10.6.1, same issue. What I didn't think about is that by default I install a heap of software (including XCode, Adobe CS4 and Office 2008) with customized packages and workgroup manager preferences.
So I was mucking around with Cocktail (the tool to clean up caches etc.) and I noticed Snow Leopard hung every time after cleaning & recreating some caches. Now that I had a reliable way to hang Snow Leopard I investigated what could cause it.
I noticed during a PackageMaker session that Adobe CS4 installs a Version Cue startup script in /etc/machinit_peruser.d. I deleted it, rebooted, used Cocktail again and it went all the way through without hanging. Rebooted again, according to the logs it pre-linked & cached the kernel and several kernel extensions and that was it, no more hangs, no more issues logging in after sleep or screensaver.
So possible causes:
- VersionCue installs itself as a kernel module or something (the location says "mach" which is the kernel after all) which is not compatible with Snow Leopard.
- The caches and kernel extensions were 'dirty' out of the box but VersionCue (or something else that interacts with it) blocked my or Snow Leopard's automated attempts to clean them.
- VersionCue reinitializes (it sits on the network after all) after a sleep or screen saver timeout in a way that gives issues with Snow Leopard

OpenSSH, SFTP and Chroot home directories

Morning all,
I'm wanting to setup SFTP in a chroot, which is simply enough to do and I already have it working; however I also want it so that when they connect via SFTP it goes directly to their home directory. Currently I have the following in "/etc/ssh/sshd_config":
Subsystem sftp internal-sftp
Match Group sftp-users
ChrootDirectory /home
AllowTCPForwarding no
ForceCommand internal-sftp
Which works perfectly fine, however when they connect there are shown the contents of the "/home" directory which they then have to "cd username" to get to their home directory. This I do not like, and it confuses our clients who connect saying they can see "random folders that aren't mine", or some that think they've "hacked" the server.
I really need it so upon connection they go to "username" directory. I can do this by using:
usermod -d /username username
Which changes the users home directory to "/username", and then upon connection it works just fine, they are taken directory to their home directory. However, I really really do not like the fact that "/etc/passwd" shows a different home directory to their real home directory, i.e it states "/username" when actually it is "/home/username".
I've spent the entire day looking a different ways of doing it, and I can't come up with anything.
Any help?

I think I have same problem. I think it is because of your user's home directory and your chroot. When you chroot you can no longer redirect people to their home directories because they are outside the chroot (to a program running inside the chroot)...clearly I'm bad at explaining stuff so I'll try an example:
home dir = /home/bob
chroot = /home
When the user gets chrooted (into /home) the /home becomes /
Then ssh tries to send them to their home in /home/bob (or to the un-chrooted /home/home/bob). This file doesn't exist so it leaves them in / (/home to the un-chrooted).
Unfortunately, I have not found a way to have my cake and eat it too. If you change their home dir you will mess up the local but fix the sftp, if you leave the local you will still have the messed up sftp.
If they are not logging on locally this isn't a problem. Just change their home in /etc/passwd to /$user. NOTE: you will not be able to change the home dir's through the normal user account modifying tools because they won't let you change it to a non-existent dir.
Hope this makes sense! (and helps )
Last edited by threetwoone (2010-08-16 19:28:05)

AppleTV sync and Network home directories

I am unable to see the AppleTV device in more than one location, using the same login account.
I have an Xserve that contains user accounts in Open Directory. This Xserve also manages user home directories. This allows me to log on to any machine with the same account and get to my home folder. Do not confuse this with what I believe is called Mobile accounts where the home directory is copied locally to each machine and is kept in sync with the server. Once I log out, nothing remains on the client machine.
So, turned on my AppleTV, logged into my Xserve since it was not being used. This account is also not "local" to the Xserve, i.e. not under /Users/. Launched iTunes, saw the AppleTV, typed in the 5 digit code, and watch the AppleTV sync. OK, no issues. Logged off the Xserve. Logged onto the desktop using the same account I just used on the Xserve. Launched iTunes, no AppleTV listed. Not cool!
Is AppleTV restricted to syncing to one computer, one account, one ip address, or one MAC address? If it is one computer how does it know the different machines?

Thanks folks for the comments but I don't believe I am coming across correctly.
Patience this is a bit compplicated
Infrustructure:
1. Xserve1 running Open Directory, managing multiple client computers and users to include user home directory location via Workgroup Manager.
2. Xserve2 handling 7 Tera Bytes of home directory storage. Repeat 7 Tera Bytes of home directory storage.
3. Many Mac desktops running 10.4.10. Only one local account, we'll call him local-admin on any of these machines which is the local admin account for that machine. Absolutely no other information for users resides on these machines.
When User1 logs onto Desktop1, Desktop1 makes a query for information from Xserve1. Xserve1 response saying the login is correct and that User1's home directory is located on Xserve2. User1 is now logged into Desktop1. Open a Finder window and if you did not know any better you would think User1 was a local user to Desktop1 because you see in Finder on the left column you have the standard items appear such as a "Home" icon next to the username, Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music, etc display. Click on anyone of them and you are in the proper place. User1 loggs off of Desktop1.
User1 now logs onto Desktop2 for whatever reason. Maybe Desktop1 was being used by User34. Desktop2 repeats what Desktop1 did. Makes the call to Xserve1, mounts the home from Xserve2. If you were to go back to Desktop1 you would find no trace of User1 except maybe in log files. The only user listed in MachintoshHD -> Users or in Unix terms /Users would be local-admin. So User1 is the only user and the iTunes library located in User1's home directory is the only library being dealt with.
On to AppleTV:
User1 loggs into Desktop1. Types in code to lock Desktop1 as the syncing source for User1's library. What was not initially understood was AppleTV also is locking Desktop1 as the streaming source for User1's library. You will see in a moment how I found this out. User1 selects the Photos to sync, turns off Movie syncing, selects Music etc. Sync finishes. AppleTV can play content can switch to streaming source and play the videos. User1 logs off Desktop1 and AppleTV acknowledges this by greying out User1's library as a streaming source.
User1 logs into Desktop2. User1 notices AppleTV still shows User1's library is greyed put as a streaming source. Shouldn't that no longer be greyed out since it is the same library? OK, lets add Desktop2 as a New Additional Streaming source. Types in the code that AppleTV displays on User1's library on Desktop2. The Sources screen on AppleTV now changes slightly. The new streaming source is added below a white line. The AppleTV source is still white letters and the original streaming source above the line is still greyed out. The new streaming source is selected and content is viewable. User1 logs off of Desktop2. The new streaming source greys out as expected.
User1 logs back into Desktop1 to sync some more photos to the AppleTV. Desktop1 is used since that is the original syncing computer. iTunes is launched. User1 waits, and waits, and waits. The AppleTV device never appears back in iTunes. Checking the AppleTV, all content is gone. User1 logs back onto Desktop2 to see if streaming still works. Nope, streaming no longer works.
Spent almost 2 hours on the phone with Apple support. Nice bunch of folks. Spoke with multiple tiers of AppleTV support and even had a gentleman on from the Enterprise Division on the phone. They are elevating this up higher and promise to get back with me. Hoping.
Complicated, yes.
My thoughts on how to solve this, don't lock the device to a computer, lock the device to an account for syncing. Also, don't automatically lock a streaming source when locking a syncing source.

Augmented Users with OSX Home Directories 10.8

Hi All.
I currently have an AD/OD setup with 10.6 Server where the users authenticate via Active Directory but the home folder is pulled down from Open Directory. To configure this we setup Augmented users and edited the inspector to map the correct Home Directory and NFSHomeDirectory paths. Thsi all works perfect and has for many years.
Ive now been tasked with replicating this setup on a new 10.8.2 Mac Mini Server and am having issues getting the home directory to map.
This is what i have done so far.
Configure DNS on AD including pointer records. Setup host name on the Mac Server to follow AD structure i.e. macserver.ad1.internal
Bound Mac Server to AD (default user shell is the only box ticked on the user experience settings).
Created open directory master.
Installed workgroup manager 10.8 and impoted Augmented user from AD.
Switched to Preferences view in WGM and imported Managed Client pref from Macintosh HD:System:Library:CoreServices:ManagedClient. Setup Syncronised URL path.
Back to Accounts in WGM and configured the mobility settings to auto mount home directory etc etc
Created a homes folder and ticked 'make available for homes"
Opened Directory Editor which is now a tab in Directory Utility. Selected Augments from the drop down list then selected my AD (Augmented User). Set the correct path for NFSHomeDirectory and also clicked + and added a string for HomeDIrectory.
When i then bind a client machine it allows me to log in with the AD user credentials but displays a blank desktop with a bouncing finder Icon. Basically it is not referencing the Home Path i have configured.
Heres an example of the paths i am using. Although i think there is something more fundimental missing from me configuration rather than the incorrcect path.
Synconistation URL          - afp://macserver.ad1.internal/Homes/%@
HomeDirectory                    - <home_dir><url>afp://macserver.ad1.internal/Homes/</url><path>michaelt</path><h ome_dir>
NFSHomeDirectory          - /Network/Servers/macserver.ad1.internal/Homes/michaelt
Any ideas of what i have missed? Or if this is possible on 10.8 as i havent read any success stories on this so far.
Many thanks and a Merry Xmas everyone
Michael

I've just upgraded my Mac operating system from OSX 10.6.8 to Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and think i've hit a bug in CS5 Bridge.
It is indeed a bug and already active in OSX 10.7
Good news is, this bug is fixed, the bad news, the fix only was added in Bridge CS6...

How to set NTFS and share permissions for Users share for home directories in Server 2012

I have a new Server 2012 server, and I want to set up a Users share, that will contain subfolders of each user's username and contain their home directory. But what do I set the share and NTFS permissions as on the root level, lets call the folder
Users? Is the following older article the correct permissions I need?
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/274443

Hi RJO22,
You can choose configure the Folder Redirection, Folder Redirection enables you to redirect the location of specific folders within user profiles to a new location, such as
a shared network location. Folder redirection is used in the process of administering user profiles and roaming user profiles. You can configure Folder Redirection using the Group Policy Management Console to redirect specific user profile folders, as well
as edit Folder Redirection policy settings.
The related KB:
Folder Redirection Overview
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732275.aspx
Specify the Location of Folders in a User Profile
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771969.aspx
I’m glad to be of help to you!
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.

Spotlight and network home directories

I've run into a recurring problem in which Spotlight stops working--entirely or in part--for my network user accounts.
Often, I'll notice that the Mail.app search feature no longer works. Interestingly, the most recent failure was that the "entire message" option would produce no results while "subject", "to", and "from" would search my mail successfully.
This has occured on other user accounts hosted by the same machine. Some users have found that their entire spotlight system (menu bar search, etc) fails to function.
Last time I just went into the server and chown/chgrp all the user accounts. For some reason, this forced spotlight to re-index and the spotlight issues went away for about a month. Now they are beginning to return.
I'm a bit confused by this. Any suggestions?

iPhoto was never designed for a network environment. It's low end user application. If you want an image management application this is designed from networks and multi users you'll need a DAM (digital asset management) application like Media Expression.
You can learn about EM and other DAM apps at The DAM Forum where those applications are discussed and evaluated by professional photographers.
You can request adding a new feature to iPhoto via http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html.
OT

Removing default folders in users home directories

My users have their home directories at /Users/<username>. I also created some directories there for users' websites and other things.
All users have only access by ftp (mail, webmail, web service, etc.), but it is never intended to use AFP or other things.
So my question is... can I safely delete the pre-set directories like Desktop, Documents, Library, Public, etc. ?
I was told that this is possible, but now have doubts as I closer looked at, for example, the Library folder. There are some .plist files and other stuff.
Before deleting them I want to get the statements of some experts

You can safely delete all of that stuff, and if they ever log in to the GUI again, Library, Desktop, and the necessary Library items will be recreated. Library and Desktop are the only ones the OS really cares about, and only then when a user is logged in to the GUI.

NFS and LDAP on different servers: Problems with location of home director

Dear Apple Experts.
We are using LDAP server for user authentification
and NFS server for home directories.
Both are decictaed servers on differnt machines.
on the NFS server there are directories
/home/urpi
for staff's home directories
and
/home/students
for student's home directories
both are mounted to the Mac minis in
/Users directory
so
/Users/urpi
contains home directories for staff
/Users/students
contains home directories for students
Authentification works well andpermission are set as needed
but OS X shows missing home directories for LDAP authentificated users
and terminal shows missing home directory
for me it is
/home/urpi/fodrek
I was tried to mount NFS to /home, but it is not allowed
Would I ask if there is any setting to add directories, where home directories are placed,please?
I look forward hearing form you.
Yours faithfully
Peter Fodrek

So none of these machines are Snow Leopard servers?
What exactly do you mean when you say you tried to mount the NFS share to home? Can you copy and paste the command and error?
It sounds as though you don't actually have the NFS shares mounted. Assuming this is so, you might want to investigate how the automount command works so that your MacMinis mount the NFS shares on boot.
If your NFS/LDAP server is an OS X 10.6 server, set the shares to be automounted as user/group directories. Make sure your LDAP server is providing correct information on the home directory location. If it is local, I think the home directories need to be in /Users. If your mounts are indeed working but you cannot login, you might consider making links from /Users to /home/urpi or /home/students on an account-by-account basis (could be done with a quick shell script).

Seperate Home Directories for Windows and Mac OS Mac Clients

Hi,
I have a Mac Mini Server with Snow Leopard 10.6.2, with open directory master set up and then joined to Active Directory and that works fine. The only thing is that I would like the macbooks to log in, and display a home directory that resides on the mac server so they can save their video editting work. So the user has 2 home directories one on windows server one on mac but same user account.
Can this be done at all???

Hi
+"Can this be done at all???"+
There are a number of approaches you could use? Modifying the AD Schema is one way. This method is generally not considered as a viable one because of the risk of SP updates breaking the modified schema. A popular way is to use the methods outlined by Mike Bombich:
http://www.bombich.com/mactips/activedir.html
This involves the use of Augmented Records stored in an even lighter LDAP database that 'straddles' (sort of) both directories (AD and OD). Yet another method would be to add redirects via AD GPOs for a home folder that resides in a suitably prepared share on the OD Master. There are still other ways depending on how hard you want to work.
AFAIK you don't want the OD Master in all these scenarios to be the KDC.
There is a wealth of information regarding this which you could google for yourself? AD-OD Integration has been going on for at least 4 years now in form or another all with varying success. How successful the integration is depends (as ever) largely on how well the AD environment has been configured. The most successful integrated sites in my experience involved the AD environment being configured from the outset to accommodate the mac platform.
There's a lot of useful stuff over on edugeek.net:
http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/
Read some of the stickies at the top of the Forum. One of them refers to Corey Carson's AD-OD Sandbox. Another site you should visit is:
http://www.afp548.com/search.php?query=AD-OD+Integration&type=all&mode=search
Tony

No Trash on OD Server located Home Directories

We have about 20 10.6.3 OSX Clients bound to an 10.6.3. OSX Server with Home directories stored on the Server. The Home Directories are served to the Clients via NFS.
What was working fine with 10.5 server and 10.5 clients and even with 10.6 server and 10.5 clients now stopped working with both server an client running on 10.6.
If one puts files from the remote home directories to the trash the Finder is not able anymore to place them in the trash, it just displays a message the files would be deleted immediately.
I have done all the usual magic: deleting the .Trash directory, changing rights on that dir, etc.
It seems the finder does not recognize the Trash folder any more. If i delete the .Trash dir it will not be recreated the next time i trash one file. If i put one file inside the .Trash dir with terminal it will be ignored by finder.
this happens with older users generated users as the server was on 10.5 and (sadly) even with new users generated on 10.6 for testing.
Does anyone have a solution for this or has encountered the same error?
Thanks,
Ben

I wonder if it is an NFS issue?
We are serving network homes via AFP and do not have the issue.
Be sure that there is a .Trashes directory on the root of the volume your network homes are on as well as the .Trash folder in the root of each user's home.
Other than that if possible make a switch to AFP and see if it works. That will help narrow it down.

Users and Remote Home Directories

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