AD plugin – Local Home, Documents mapped to nework home

[fherbert]

I am currently investigating the possibility of using the adplugin in 10.4.2 to create the home folder for the network user locally. Therefore using the User Template thats exists on the system to create the users home folder – ie give the user a default profile. A built in function of the ad plugin is to mount the users network home folder on the desktop and also place a shortcut to the users home folder in the dock. The folder mounted on the desktop is the root shared folder for home folders – ie /Staff2/u/username is the location of the home folder, but Staff2 is the mounted volume.

I need to find a way to “hide” the Staff2 sharepoint on the desktop ( I have tried to simply rename the sharepoint in the /Volumes folder, putting a full stop (.) (or period) before the name but this does not hide the volume on the desktop.

In order to map the documents folder to the network home documents fodler, I need to get the network home folder path variable from somewhere. As far as I can see, the active directory plugin creates a custom com.apple.dock.plist, loginwindow.plist and some other plist files in the /Library/Managed Preferences/$USER folder. Looking at the com.apple.dock.plist file has the shortcut for the users home folder that appears in the dock, but only gives me the root share point – ie _CFURLString = afp://fileserver/Staff2 and not the full path to the users network home folder.

Anyone got any ideas on how I can get the full network home folder path so I can redirect the users documents folder and not display the home folder share point on the desktop??

Thanks

[fherbert]

I have made some progress on this issue. I have written a script which will generate the home folder path using the information found in /Library/Managed Preferences/$USER/loginwindow.plist

I still have not found a way to hide the network home folder share point on the desktop.

[fherbert]

Possibly, are you suggesting changing the unc path for home folder on the server??
Currently the home folder path on the windows profile is: \\\\server\\Staff1\\u\\username

[fherbert]

I still want the users to have a network home folder, but only at this stage for their documents folder. I have got everything I need working, but the only issue is that the AD plugin is mounting the root share point and not the users network home folder on the desktop. I guess there isn’t a way around this???

The reason I need a local home folder is that a lot of users complain that when they login with their network login, some applications will not render properly – ie FCP and Maya…. also another main issue is corrupt preferences. By having the home folder local and created every time they login, they get a defined set of ALL application preferences, not just the ones you can setup in workgroup manager. ie. photoshop uses binary preference files that you just can’t manage from workgroup manager (that I know of).

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