Leopard 10.5.2, mobile accounts, and AD’s homeDirectory attribute

[Llewellyn]

Is there a way to find out what Mac OS X 10.5.2 thinks is a user’s home directory?

With adsiedit I can see that AD’s homeDirectory attribute is set to the UNC path \\server\share\username\ and on the Mac OS X client I can browse to smb://server/share/username and mount the share properly but when I try to use Apple’s home synching I get an error message saying: “Your network home is currently unavailable. Try again later when it is available.”

Is there an easy way to check to see if the Mac is pulling the correct path from the AD user? Is it in a .plist somewhere? Is there a way to force the Mac client to use the correct path?

All of the other network shares mount fine and the other aspects of binding and authenticating and getting Exchange email etc. etc. all seem fine, it’s just seems to be a problem with the mobile account properties for the home directory.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Llewellyn

[Llewellyn]

Running dscl seems to show that the mac client can read the properties from AD correctly and the path seems OK.

Which AD attribute is the mac using to derive network home location, the dsAttrTypeNative:homeDirectory? That has the right UNC path listed.

Under just plain “HomeDirectory” I see an SMB url but instead of \\server\share\user it uses the FQDN for the server (\\server.domain.forest\share\user)…which actually brings up a password prompt when I try to browse to it instead of just logging me on.

Under directory utility->services->advanced options->user experience I have:

Create mobile account at login
Require confirmation before creating a mobile account
Use UNC path from Active Directory to derive network home location
Network protocol to be used: SMB
Default user shell: /bin/bash

I’m sure this is simple, but it’s been a frustrating couple of days trying to figure out what is going on…

Thanks.

[Author]

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