Customize MAC desktop & home folders via AD Login

[schoolhelper]

Hello All,

I’m only a few months into supporting MACs for my daughters school, so please excuse my MAC ignorance or mis-speaks . It’s a small school and it’s all volunteer… Anyway, they have a win2003 server. The computer lab was pc and they just purchased 28 new imacs to replace them…

I have managed to configure a MAC (ox=10.5.6) to login to a windows server 2003/Active Directory (AD). I even see a home folder down in my dock. I can login to the mac via the AD authentication w/o creating an account on the MAC.
Life is good…
However, one small clitch…On one of the updated machines, 10.5.7, I seem to login w/ AD credentials and do not get a home folder in the dock, nor can I see any other folders on the server. I performed the same setup config as on a 10.5.6 machine, which I do see the server folders…Not sure if it’s a version thing or if I did something different inadvertantly….any ideas? Plan on updating to latest rev, creating a “clean” image and coping ot all MACs for new school year….

In addition: (Just in case you thought this was over….. 🙂 )

Our concept is to have each student be able to login to any mac (w/o setting up accounts on each mac) via AD credentials. I think we have this done per above. We would like each student to be a part of a group, in this case called grade x..ie grade 1, grade 2, grade 3. Create a user on the server and include them in each respective group….Each student could login to any mac and see their private and group folder. That said, we have two things we would like:

1- Provide a private folder on the Dock based on user login. Also provide a group folder on the dock based on the group (grade) the user is in. The intent is to use these folders to store and/or hand-in assignments. The teachers would have access rights to these folders. These folders would reside on the 2003 server and be mounted on the MACs.
2- Custom configure the desktop based on a group. The user would login w/ their AD credentials and the Win 2003 server would have them included in a group. In our case, each student would be a respective group called grade. Ie. Grade 1, grade 2 etc. The desktop would load a configuration based on grade. Younger students would have a much more limted dock selection etc…

I’ve been trying to read about this, but only seem to find bits and pieces that discuss writing scripts etc. I have no problem w/ scripts, but a limited (to date, but learning) knowledge of MACs file structure etc…. Worked w/ unix (AIX) many years ago, but bad memory…so would need some detail about how/where/what of writing & locating scripts if scripts are required. Was hoping there is something in the

Do you have/or know where to find a step by step how to configure these features? Or any other help….

Thanks in advance

[macinandy]

Hi, I’d have a look at the following
[url]http://www.wazmac.com/servers_network/fileservers/osxserver_setup/osxserver105_setup.htm[/url]
and [url]http://web.me.com/johnd/JohnDs_Site/Tips_%26_Tricks/Entries/2008/10/27_Tips_%26_Tricks_for_Macintosh_Management_-_Leopard.html[/url]
they should get you where you want to be.
Cheers

[schoolhelper]

I’ll take a look….

Thank You

😀

[guitar24t]

I don’t know what your budget is, but the best thing to manage mac’s is OS X server (obviously 😀 ).
If you can wait until the new school year, September will see the release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard which will be selling for an amazing $500 (unlimited client)! This seems like the best option to administer macs, but keep in mind you would also need a mac to run it on. Hope this helps,
Robert

[Author]

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