User Templates for Network Home Folders

[claywilliams]

I apologize in advance if this has been covered. I’ve been searching high and low and have found little mention of this.

We are about to implement an AD-OD environment using home folders on a windows server running extremeZ-IP for the home folders and all user data in Active Direcctory. Our Xserve is going to be used strictly for group management.

On my build I have various customizations in the user templates. I had presumed that OS X populates an empty home folder automatically using user templates. Sad but sad, it doesn’t – at least not in any way I’ve been able to intuit. Worse, it populates the home folders with weird default preferences that I can’t seem to track down.
Example: I have deleted com.apple.dockfixup.plist but the same default Apple dock appears when faced with an empty home folder. Unless I want to enforce a dock at all times, Mail.app, itunes, iphoto, imovie, etc will always clutter up my users’ docks.

I know that many prefs can be managed from WGM, but there are documents, preferences, bookmarks and such that I would like to be in every home folder by default.

Doing this manually for every user seems cumbersome.
I was about to give up and create a duplicate user database in WGM just so I could use "Create Home Folder" but realized that it wants to be pointed to a Mac, not a Windows file server.

If anyone has any insight on this, I would greatly appreciate it.
thanks
=c=

[Anonymous]

The issue you are having is because when the Dock app starts up, it does not see a dock preference file in the user’s home directory. So, it takes a default plist and places it in the user’s home directory to give them a dock to start with.

You can two choices for this. The first is to prepopulate each home directory with the dock pref file that you want people to start with. For example, you might just give them a Dock with Safari and then do the rest from workgroup manager.

Alternatively, you could modify the Dock app’s defaults. This needs to be done on each client. You can find the file in:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/default.plist

This solution is fine for the Dock, however, you will probably find many other applications that don’t have the defaults you want. Its easier in the long run to just populate the user’s home directory with the initial settings you want when you create their account.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information about the Dock, I hadn’t thought to look there.

What puzzles me about all this is that the OS, when pointed at an empty home folder creates the default folders (desktop, documents, movies, music, etc.), apps like the Dock create default preferences, but they don’t consult the User Template set on the system. Isn’t that what User Template is supposed to be for?

So, what we’ll have to do is prepopulate ever new user’s home folder on the server after they are created?

[tbone]

Have you had a look at:

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/homedir.html

[smyrna]

[QUOTE BY= tbone] Have you had a look at:

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/homedir.html[/QUOTE]

I am having the same issue as the original poster and this link deos not really involve server user home directory creation. that is to move your home directory from what i can tell

[smyrna]

[QUOTE BY= claywilliams] I apologize in advance if this has been covered. I’ve been searching high and low and have found little mention of this.

We are about to implement an AD-OD environment using home folders on a windows server running extremeZ-IP for the home folders and all user data in Active Direcctory. Our Xserve is going to be used strictly for group management.

On my build I have various customizations in the user templates. I had presumed that OS X populates an empty home folder automatically using user templates. Sad but sad, it doesn’t – at least not in any way I’ve been able to intuit. Worse, it populates the home folders with weird default preferences that I can’t seem to track down.
Example: I have deleted com.apple.dockfixup.plist but the same default Apple dock appears when faced with an empty home folder. Unless I want to enforce a dock at all times, Mail.app, itunes, iphoto, imovie, etc will always clutter up my users’ docks.

I know that many prefs can be managed from WGM, but there are documents, preferences, bookmarks and such that I would like to be in every home folder by default.

Doing this manually for every user seems cumbersome.
I was about to give up and create a duplicate user database in WGM just so I could use “Create Home Folder” but realized that it wants to be pointed to a Mac, not a Windows file server.

If anyone has any insight on this, I would greatly appreciate it.
thanks
=c=[/QUOTE]

i igured how to do it today i logged in as root created a folder in the user template dir and set the same permissions as the documents dir and the damn thing worked great!!!

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