multiple users, one login, slowness. Should I be surprised?

[nulldev1ce]

I have a client with an XServe G5 running 10.4.11 Server (very fresh install — just rebuilt from scratch a couple weeks ago due to accidental destruction of OD). He runs a lab with about 20 brand-new iMacs which are all running Leopard. The way he has things set up, when a class comes in to use the lab, each kid sits down at a machine and they all log in with the same account (e.g. “room12” for the 2nd graders whose homeroom is Room 12).

My understanding of terminology is weak, so bear with me. This is the sort of configuration where the system and apps are installed locally and run locally, and there are some local accounts available, but users can also log in against the network users defined via Workgroup Manager and/or Open Directory on the server. Those users get “their” home folder, Desktop, etc. at whichever machine they log in to. What do you call this setup? I thought it was “mobile Desktop” but then someone said that only applies to laptops.

Anyway, so we’ve been trying to fix this, and I told him to look at https://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=MCXRedirector He replied with:

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I get to here:

For a simple example select Login Redirections. Select and open the Login Redirections key and then click New Key again. Now you have your first redirect action to work with.

There are four different redirect actions to choose from:

deleteAndCreateSymLink: This action deletes the folder in the home and redirects to a local symlink
renameAndCreateSymLink: This action renames the folder in the home and redirects to a local symlink
deletePath: This action just whacks a folder in the home
deleteSymLinkAndRestore: This action removes the symlink and then restores a folder that was renamed by the renameAndCreateSymLink action.

but don’t see those choices..

and I get this:

**** Type doesn’t match preference manifest.
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I also tried Network Home Redirector (the “basic”) one, from http://jochsner.dyndns.org/scripts/NHR.html, on one of the clients; then to test, I opened TextEdit, made a new document, saved it to my desktop, edited it, and hit save again to save the changes, and got an error. So we had to un-do that.

We’re feeling rather stumped. Any ideas? Let me know if more info is needed and I will provide whatever I can. Thank you in advance for any help.

— MB

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