Missing User Account Folders

[tristan_mason]

Hi All (yes, it’s me yet again…)

So things have been progressing well and I have been learning a great deal and getting closer to the end game, a finished, deployable image BUT…

I have this niggling issue with Folders going missing from the User account which is created as the last event in my build train. I am using the “createUser” package that comes with instaDMG. it’s just a simple admin account with the password that comes with the script so i’ve not really fiddled with the script other than to change the icon and the name. I’ve commented out everything from my catalog except Flash Player, ClearReg and createUser and it worked fine. Now it faults with these in the build train. I’m running a last test for the day with only the 10.5 vanilla and my catalog but i have commented everything out of my catalog except for the clearReg and createAdmin and will post the result before I leave today.

The folders that are missing (this time, it can be less) are, Downloads, Movies, Music, Pictures, Public and Sites.

I have wiped instaDMG and started again. Re-imported my OS disc, cleared caches and everything in between EXCEPT tested the plain old vanilla script and then built upon that.

Tomorrow perhaps. Just wondering if anyone has had similar issue and has any words of wisdom? I’ve neglected to look in the logs but will do so once this bake has finished.

Again, thanks to everyone who has helped me greatly to date.

Cheers

Tristan

[tristan_mason]

After a little bit of fiddling i’m getting the feeling i need to go back and massage most of my generated pkg’s especially the Composer Diffs ones… oh the pain!

Tristan

[tristan_mason]

(quick update…)

I’m about a third through my pkg’s and sure enough. if I remove any reference to the users and users/admin (add your folder name here) I have no issues with missing folders.

What a trap for young players! If I had have worked this out a few weeks ago it could have saved me some pain.

Hope this post will help others…

When creating pkg files of software you intend to use in your build train make sure you DO NOT include stuff from the Users folder in the package. If you want to keep custom settings for software use Plists etc and pop them in the User Template.

Cheers

Tristan

[Allister Banks]

My favorite first-timer gaffe was trying installease, which has the ‘feature’ of doing uninstallation…. during the install! So I thought I was excluding certain directories from the package, and when instadmg ran, it found MY home folder and wiped out MY library. I noticed it when iTunes stopped playing…

This is another reason why you DON”T RUN INSTADMG ON YOUR SERVER, production or not – what a pain in the arse that was! Thanks to CrashPlan, no animals were harmed in the filming, but still – I don’t even build booted from my workstation’s volume when I can help it.

Allister

[tristan_mason]

Funny you mention the server issue Allister as there seem to be a few people here learning the hard way only to run instaDMG only on a client machine.

I must give thanks here to dead2sin for driving home the point that removing stuff from said afore mentioned folder/s WILL NOT break the software. It may however remove the “nice” setup you spent those few minutes creating for your end users. A carefully placed pkg of Plists in the right place will generally fix this though.

I’m off to re-make more pkg’s.

Ciao Ciao

Tristan

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