I’ve seen this too. I haven’t taken the time to care, yet.

The createUser package, I don’t think, creates a home folder. I don’t see it in the code.

I have the some of the same files missing as you. So I’m thinking that one of the packages is creating the home folder from a package. My accounts are the same that I make with createUser and I package apps with. I have used composer, pkgdiff, and packagmaker packages. I’m guessing that within one of the packages there is a home folder created with that account name.

The system needs the Library folder, so it creates that, if nothing else has. I’d be willing to bet the Desktop folder is the same. Not sure about Downloads, maybe it’s needed?

Do you have any packages that could install something to that “users” folder?

Rusty

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: aaronwyatt[/u][p][i]Also I found this primary user account has cached info stored in the “Connect to Server” dialogue box. Any thoughts on how or where I’m dragging this in from? I use the same account username and password in the default account as is on the machine I’m “building” the image on, so is it possible that CreateUser is confused about where the account lives?[/i][/p][/QUOTE]”Favorite” servers are in ~/Library/Favorites. To see if it’s pulling from the account you’re currently logged into, put a few dummy “Favorites” in the “Connect to Server” dialog and see if they get pulled along at image creation time.

Also, can you examine the InstaDMG output DMG and see what exists in /Users/*username* ?

– Patrick

Ah, the joy of having made a mistake and being able to help others avoid it(or at least recover from it).
I ran into this issue myself some time ago.
I was convinced I had done everything just so, and was still getting incomplete new user accounts.
Then I did some heavy reading (would have been much easier if I had searched these forums or the macosxhints.com forums, but instead I read apple white papers, knowledge base, manuals, etc… yuck).

The problem (just to be clear): After creating a new user via a script, you log into that account to find it does not match the default user setup you created in /System/Library/User Tempalte/English.lproj, and in fact is missing folder/files.

The reason: The OS will only populate a new user account if it is actually empty when it finds it the first time. While this may have many useful and logical reasons for being the default behavior, it is n this case annoying. How could this be the cause of ‘my’ issues? ‘I’ did not put anything into the new user account, this is the first time ‘I’ am logging in!
Well, yes BUT… In my case i found the answer in a few of my other installer packages, and scripts. I was writing stuff to the preferences folder of my new user. This created a library/preferences folder and several plist files. The OS then refused to overwrite those, and in fact wrote nothing new from the default setup, creating my half setup wierdo account.

The Answer: VERY carefully go through your scripts and installers and see what gets added to the user folder.
Reroute everything that can be rerouted to the default profile in english.lproj, and postpone the rest until after first login.

Simple but annoying.

I hope this helps.

This morning I altered things a little (moved the createuser pkgs (for three users) into separate numbered folders in CustomPKG) and ran the thing again. Figured I’d just set up admin, faculty, and student users in one go. I checked the image before writing it to my test Mac and found no user directories at all. Imaged and booted test Mac anyway, just to see what would happen. The startup sequence skipped the registration (per clearReg.pkg) and gave me a login screen with my three users on it. Right user names, wrong icons, and I couldn’t log in with any of them.

I am at the “let’s see how this works” stage with instaDMG, so the only CustomPKGs I have are three createuser and clearReg. I only changed the USERDATA file inside the createuser package. Was there something else I was supposed to do? Do I need another package to insert the directories?

I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re saying, knowmad, as I have things pretty simplified already, AFAIK. Am I supposed to go through the createuser script itself?

OUCH, ok I guess I was not as helpful as I thought I was.
Either that, or I am flat out wrong (always possible).

Ok, last in first out: AaronWyatt, your on the right track as far as I am concerned to figure this out, but your gonna kill yourself doing it the long way. Easiest way to check your setup is to run instadmg again, using the cached base os image (to shorten build time, this happens automatically assuming you make no changes to the source disk image or the choices file) and the only custom packages you should run are your createuser package and the clearreg.

Boot something from the resulting image and see if you get a fully loaded home folder.

If it works, its one of your other packages. If it does not work, I am wrong.

Now, for what Chops was saying…… um….. I got no good answer. I can tell you that all I am doing to the create user script is making a password hash and editing the userdata section. It works for me (though you have made me curious and I will be making new image tomorrow night to check). None of that helps you and is not what you wanted to hear. BUT going back to what I always tell my team/friends/family/clients/etc… start from the basic and go from there. Rebuild once more, but keep only one instance of the createuser and see what you get.

here, for the fun of it, is one of my USERDATA files:
[code]
#replace these values with your own. Comment out to use defaults
shortname=localadmin
longname=”LocalAdministrator”

#leave blank for next available uid
uid=499

#leave blank for 20
gid=20

#leave blank for /bin/bash
#shell=”/bin/bash”

#leave blank for /Library/User Pictures/Nature/Zen.tif
#pic=”/Library/User Pictures/Nature/Zen.tif”

#uncomment to set password (not recommended since password is clear text)
#if blank, it will use password hash file “password_hash”
#password=”mypassword”

#guid, leave blank for auto gen
#GUID=D4F8BFC9-8EC8-4645-A739-516F59571A2E

#admin
#1 – add to admin group
#0 – don’t add to admin group
admin=1[/code]
I hope that helps, and we can all compare notes in a few days with further testing.

and as a final item, Aaronwyatt, check that your not writing defaults to the user’s prefs folder… thats the one that got me when I started.