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Anybody had a chance to play with this feature of Tiger Server yet ?. I tried to get them to work last night on my home network without much success, so does anybody have any hints and tips to share for a successful deployment ?
Also does anybody know why by default ~/Library is set to be ignored on Sync ?. One of the main reasons I want to use Mobile Home Directories is to keep my Mail folder the same on my Powerbook and desktop, so this seems like a bit of a limitation to me.
MacTroll wrote:
Portable Homes work fairly well in my testing in the lab.
You don’t even need an OSXS for this, a plain SMB share off of a 2k3 box works great, any SMB share should work if you have the users set up that way.
The rationale behind excluding ~/Library was that some apps broke with this, but I was not told which ones…
However, my gut feeling is that you could use the Inspector in WGM to hand edit the synched folders to include what you wanted since the check is most likely being done in the WGM GUI and not in the MCX machinery itself.
Yeah?
Because so far the changes from the Portable device don’t get pushed to the server at all. Still more work needs to be done to figure out why. It is driving me a little batty.
ah-ha.
i suppose it helps when the remote user can write to the directory. ta-da!
now what is troubling is that my portable user, an administrator of the machine and directory, cannot authorize things like software updates.
the softwareupdate GUI doesn’t do it, but of course i can sudo softwareupdate from the Terminal.
huh!
MacTroll wrote:
The rationale behind excluding ~/Library was that some apps broke with this, but I was not told which ones…
Indeed. I was expecting to have to filter out Caches and a couple of other directories in Library, but would be curious to find out what apps were breaking. Curiously any attempt to add a directory in ~Library is killed by the Workgroup Manager, so I suspect that you are correct in that you could probably fix it up behind the scenes. It would be nice to have the option of synching some parts of the Library folder.
Anyway I finally managed to get the Portable Home Directories to work. Turns out I hadn’t setup the User correctly in OpenDirectory. However…
Be very careful when synching for the first time as instead of merging, the first sync blew away the files and folders in the Desktop and Documents folder as the networked version was empty. Not sure if I selected the wrong option somewhere along the line. Anyway its working now.
I wouldn’t have minded if those weren’t the two folders I didn’t have recent backups of 😕
AledDavies wrote:
Anyway I finally managed to get the Portable Home Directories to work. Turns out I hadn’t setup the User correctly in OpenDirectory.
Care to share the correct configuration details for those of us who aren’t quite as experienced?AaronAdams wrote:
Care to share the correct configuration details for those of us who aren’t quite as experienced?
OK. All this was discovered via trial and error and the Apple documentation. Your mileage may vary…
0. If its an existing user backup the home directory. If its a local account then delete it from all the machines its on. If the directory is already a network home then delete all copies of the users home directory on all the clients and slave servers it might be on EXCEPT the master. You can also delete the master as its easier and safer to start from a clean slate.
1. Make sure that the home directory you want to be make Mobile is defined in the Users configuration in Open Directory using a URI rather than a file system path. (afp://yourserver/Users rather than /Users) You can set up a mobile directory using /Users however it will end up synching against itself which is really confusing as you won’t be warned of this.
2. On the preferences/Mobility section of Workgroup Manager configure the sync preferences as necessary.
3. On one of your clients log in. You should be prompted to create a mobile home on this machine. Answer yes and a home directory will be created. You know that a mobile directory is active as the menu will have the mobile directory icon (two houses).
4. Open System Preferences/Accounts. Check that the configure button is un-greyed. If its grayed then you’ve probably done something wrong or the user doesn’t have permissions to change it. I changed the sync process to be manual rather than automatic at this point. You can also make the User a local admin at this point if needed.
5. Either from the Accounts tab or the Mobile Directory Menu perform the first sync manually. This should update the local drive with everything apart from ~Library from the Network home. At this stage I lost files on the local home directory ~Desktop and ~Documents that weren’t on the server. This may have been a mistake on my part or a result of the first sync being overzealous when copying from the Network.
6. Now create a test file. Sync it up to the network. Then on another machine log in as the mobile user, and verify that the file and any others in your networked home gets pulled from the network account when you sync.
7. At this point you can rebuild the users home directory as necessary from the backup. After updating each directory I would sync to the network. Remember that the sync doesn’t update ~Library so you will have to copy these settings manually.
Like I said, this worked for me. Other peoples mileage may vary. Make lots of backups etc. Step 1 is blindingly obvious when you think about it, but its easy to trip up on it if you are not paying attention.
Caveat:
I have a mobile home directory as an easy way to keep the same data in sync on two computers. My OSXS is my desktop workstation and household fileserver.
When I login to the OSXS host, I am prompted to create a mobile home.
I told it “never” and it still asks every time I login. Any ideas?
AledDavies wrote:
OK. All this was discovered via trial and error and the Apple documentation. Your mileage may vary…
Thanks for taking the time to write that out, I’m sure many of us will appreciate it as time goes on.AledDavies wrote:
You can set up a mobile directory using /Users however it will end up synching against itself which is really confusing as you won’t be warned of this.
It seems kind dumb that you should be able to do this. Is there any real reason why you’d want to sync a home directory back onto itself? If not , shouldn’t there be a warning presented, if not an outright denial?Anonymous wrote:
When I login to the OSXS host, I am prompted to create a mobile home.
I told it “never” and it still asks every time I login. Any ideas?
I have that same issue on all of my clients and the server. Also, they never remember my workgroup management settings. I’ve had that problem since Panther. Is this something I’m doing wrong?: It seems kind dumb that you should be able to do this. Is there any real reason why you’d want to sync a home directory back onto itself? If not , shouldn’t there be a warning presented, if not an outright denial?
That’s what I would have thought. I also cannot think of a reason that you would want to do this as you are comparing the same files…
: I have that same issue on all of my clients and the server. Also, they never remember my workgroup management settings. I’ve had that problem since Panther. Is this something I’m doing wrong?
I had the workgroup settings thing a couple of times before I did the first sync. Haven’t seen it since. I’ll keep my eyes open to see if it happens again. I have a feeling it may be a preference file that needs to be created at some point during the process.
MacTroll wrote:
The rationale behind excluding ~/Library was that some apps broke with this, but I was not told which ones…
However, my gut feeling is that you could use the Inspector in WGM to hand edit the synched folders to include what you wanted since the check is most likely being done in the WGM GUI and not in the MCX machinery itself.
Any word on if a fix “behind the scenes” of the WGM will allow syncing? This feature seems pretty useless without at least the ability to sync ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Preferences…
AledDavies wrote:
0. If its an existing user backup the home directory. If its a local account then delete it from all the machines its on. If the directory is already a network home then delete all copies of the users home directory on all the clients and slave servers it might be on EXCEPT the master. You can also delete the master as its easier and safer to start from a clean slate.
I want to set up a portable home dir for one powerbook to sync with one server.
It is a local account on the powerbook. Do you mean delete it from there (after it has been backed up of course)?
and… nothing in the home dir on the server to start?
AledDavies wrote:
1. Make sure that the home directory you want to be make Mobile is defined in the Users configuration in Open Directory using a URI rather than a file system path. (afp://yourserver/Users rather than /Users) You can set up a mobile directory using /Users however it will end up synching against itself which is really confusing as you won’t be warned of this.
Would the home then be:
Mac OS X Server/Share point URL:
afp://yoursever/path_to_where_you_want_homesPath:
usernameHome:
path_to_where_you_want_homesLastly, should the user name on the client be the same or different from the username on the server?
I enabled the “Create mobile account at login” in Directory Access. Restarted. I unchecked the box after login that asked if I wanted the user to be part of a Workgroup. I didn’t want to manage the user, just allow them to login when they are off the network. Unfortunately I never got the next screen to create a mobile user.
I tried unchecking the option in Directory Access, tried a few restarts but I can’t get the option to create a mobile user again. The user does not show up in the local NetInfo directory.
Does anybody know where that preference to “Create a mobile account at login” is kept? Or how I can get that option back?
AledDavies wrote:
Anybody had a chance to play with this feature of Tiger Server yet ?. I tried to get them to work last night on my home network without much success, so does anybody have any hints and tips to share for a successful deployment ?
Also does anybody know why by default ~/Library is set to be ignored on Sync ?. One of the main reasons I want to use Mobile Home Directories is to keep my Mail folder the same on my Powerbook and desktop, so this seems like a bit of a limitation to me.
If all you want to do is sync mail between two machines, use the IMAP server in OSXS. Set this up as your main mail repository, and you can set up clients to access it. The Mail client will cache a local copy of your email on each machine.
You can log in from anywhere using webmail as well.
If you want to have the IMAP server keep up to date with all and sundry of your other email accounts, set up fetchmail (it’s already installed on MacOSXS).
Not that mobile home directories aren’t interesting, but the IMAP method works better, I think.
typically I’ve logged in to a server account first on a desktop (to make sure the account is okay), then logged out and then log in on a laptop, go to system preferences and select Create Mobile Account. Tiger does it’s wonder automagically.
Syncing doesn’t work on our wireless since it’s not the same subnet.c
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