Remote Login without server

[Anonymous]

ok, this post is very basic and I might not be in the right area, but I would at the very least appreciate a point in the right direction…

I have two iMacs running 10.3.4. i would like to store all of our users’ profiles (all the preferences, bookmarks, etc.) on one of the iMacs. Then if someone wants to log in from the second computer, then would have access to their profile from the first computer. Is there anyway to do this?

ps I don’t own OS X server.

[bcirvin]

I’ve heard that you can create symlinks to an automatically mounted remote home – probably would work best by creating the user on the master machine, then setting up the client end to automount at the system level the users folder on the master machine. one could then create symlinks in the home on the client machine that would point to the home folder items in the automounted volume. To create symlinks, check out “man ln” in the terminal (minus quotes).

I have NOT tried this, bear in mind, just hear rumours about it….and, by the way, all of the preferences you refer to are located in the <homefolder>/Library

Paying 499 for the 10 user liscence of server may be easier than all of this :^)

blake/

[Anonymous]

I had come across this solution:

http://www.smalldog.com/newsarchive/techtails_display.php?id=193

[quote:84b1f1c973]Network Home Folders

Have you ever been in a situation at work or school where you normally
work on one computer but for various reasons need to use another? Did
you wish to have all of your files, bookmarks, etc., available on your
temporary computer? While not trivial, this is possible to do if you
have more than one computer on your network. For those of you who enjoy
a challenge, the following will show you how to “roll your own”
solution.

WARNING: WHILE CONVENIENT, THIS IS NOT SECURE. MAKE CERTAIN THAT YOU
TRUST YOUR USERS AND THAT YOU ARE BEHIND A FIREWALL. There are more
secure ways to do this, but that’s for another Tech Tails.

Let me begin with a little theory. The files that you typically see on
your desktop–documents folder, music folder, etc.–are stored in a
folder called Users/YourUserName on your hard drive. While this works
well with one machine, things get complicated when you have many. It is
possible to store the information that is in the YourUserName folder on
one computer but access them from a second as if they were on the
second computer. To make this work, two things need to happen: One
computer needs to share the Users folder to others, and a second
computer needs to be told how to access that folder as if it were on
the local hard drive.

The first step is to set up sharing on one computer. For this I
recommend selecting the computer that you usually work on and that is
on most/all of the time. You’ll need to download a program called NFS
Manager .

Install NFS Manager. Open /Applications/Netinfo Manager and click on
the Enable Root User. MAKE THIS PASSWORD VERY SECURE, SINCE ROOT CAN DO
ANYTHING TO YOUR SYSTEM. Quit Netinfo Manager. Open NFS Manager. Click
on NFS Shares. Click on Add Entry. Now locate the folder you want to
share which in this case is /Users. Select Only Computers from a
specified list. In this, enter the IP of the second computer. To find
the IP, go to Apple Menu>>System Preferences>> Network and copy the IP
Address. Set Treat Root Account as user root and check off Accept
connections to folders inside the shared folder. Click on Activate
Shares. Finally, create an account for the user that you want to share
if you have not done so already. Open Netinfo Manager again and go to
the users section. Select your user and look for the UID tag. Change
its value to 2000 and add 1 to subsequent accounts.

Now go to the client (second) computer. Go to Apple Menu>> System
Preferences>> Accounts and create an account with the same name as the
account on the other machine that you want to access. Download and
install NFS Manager and also again enable root in Netinfo Manager. Open
NFS Manager and click on the NFS Connections tab and click on Add
Entry. In NFS Server, type the IP Address of the other computer. In NFS
Server type /Users. In Mount Point, check off In Network folder. Select
Allow user to interrupt server, Postpone connection, and Use secure
communication ports options. Now finally type activate connections.
Open Netinfo Manager and go to the users section. Select your user and
then search for the UID Property. Make certain that it is set to 2000,
which was the numeric value on your other machine. Close Netinfo
Manager. Restart your computer. At the login screen, select your user.
If all works well, you will see your desktop and other files as if they
were on the machine that you are working on, although they actually
exist on the other.[/quote:84b1f1c973]

But when I changed my UID tag to 2000 on my main computer and then logged in, I found that all my user setting were no longer there…it was like I was a new user. I then when back into Netinfo and put back the original number (I think it was 503) and all my settings returned.

So I could not get it to work.

[bcirvin]

I have not used nfs manager, but…

It sounds like when you changed the user id for the main computer’s user, the main computer thought that the files for that user (originally user id 501) now belonged to somebody else (since you had changed to 2000).

try looking in the users folder of the main machine to see if another folder has been added for your user – if the machine could not access the old home folder due to differing user id numbers, than it would probably make a new folder for that user.

let me know what you find.

[Anonymous]

[quote:374b5c2c01=”bcirvin”]

try looking in the users folder of the main machine to see if another folder has been added for your user – if the machine could not access the old home folder due to differing user id numbers, than it would probably make a new folder for that user.

let me know what you find.[/quote:374b5c2c01]

I looked on the main machine…there are no new users. Before I changed the USERID, there were 3 users on the machine. I changed the userID to 2000 then changed it back to 501 and now there are still 3 users.

Is that what you were asking?

[bcirvin]

were there any new home folders? if you try to run apps on the newly modified user acct, do you get strange errors?

blake/

[Anonymous]

[quote:305420e6a1=”bcirvin”]were there any new home folders? if you try to run apps on the newly modified user acct, do you get strange errors?[/quote:305420e6a1]

Can a user have more than one “home” folder? There are three users, so I guess there are only three home folders. Let me state this another way…in the Users folder, there are 4 folders, one is called “Shared” then the other three folders are the names of the users.

Since I changed the UserID back to 501, I have used that account with no problems. It seems to be totally normal.

[bcirvin]

if, after you changed the id for the first time, you had issues, it might be because the files in the home folder did not get “marked” (permissions) for that user id. i think you can use chmod and similar command to change the uid tags for files recursively…

blake/

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