Comments on: Portable Home Directories without Open Directory, part 3

By: Dave R

Dave R — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:12:55 +0000

Hi Greg,
Sorry for the long delayed response, but I was able to find a remedy for the mobile homes synching issue noted in the above details.

In Workgroup Manger we were only synching the Documents Folder, Safari Library Folder, and FireFox Application Support folder. For some reason, in 10.4.11, we could not get all Syncs (Login, Logout, and Background) to work when logged in as a mobile user.

After playing around for quite a while, we discovered that the three Synching functions would not work unless we created (in the Mobile User’s Network home folder) a Preferences folder with the com.apple.homeSync.plist inside. The com.apple.homeSync.plist was copied from the user’s local Library/Preferences. Once we did this, all Synching functions worked. Not sure whether this is a hidden bug in the process, but we are now working fine.

10.5.x computers did not have this issue.

Special thanks to Ben Gollmer from TC Networks for assisting us in solving this issue.

By: Dave R

Dave R — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:21:51 +0000

Looks like the mount URL is where this is stemming from. I got a hold of a Mac with 10.5.5 installed on it, and I set it up for PHD. Console gave me the following error…

EXCEPTION: Unable to mount remote home volume (Carbon error -5002)
[2009/02/26 15:11:27.813] Peer “network” is unable to sync. Not enough peers will be available to continue syncing.

I guess I still don’t understand why background and manual syncs work (which means it must be mounting the remote home volume) and Login/Logout sync is unable to mount the remote home. I wonder whether it is trying to authenticate differently in Login/Logout syncs?

By: GregN

GregN — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:59:02 +0000

I haven’t used a Tiger machine for a long time; home.mhdMountPath has to refer to either the mount URL or where it mounts on the local filesystem.

By: Dave R

Dave R — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:03:14 +0000

Greg,
Do you have an idea what “home.mhdMountPath” is referring to in the aforementioned error? (OriginalHomeDirectory???) Obviously, what home.mhdMountPath is looking for must be empty or nonexistent.

Then the questions that need to be answered are “why” is it empty and what does it need to be populated with? -or- If it is nonexistent, “where” does it need to be created and what does it need to be populated with?

By: Dave R

Dave R — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:46:09 +0000

Greg,
I did find another interesting output in the mirror agent.log. Notice the “err -1 (syncThreadStart)” listed after the home.mhdMountPath is NULL return. Not sure whether that is being posted due to the offending “home.mhdMountPath is NULL error” or whether it is a clue to something else. Funny thing is that I don’t always see that statement in the MHD output. I’ll continue to dig on my end. Thanks!

MHD: =================================================
MHD: ****** MirrorAgent-99.9.7 (8S165) (pid 989) starting Tue Feb 24 12:45:10 2009
MHD: =================================================
MHD: ****** MirrorAgent-99.9.7 (8S165) (pid 1023) starting Tue Feb 24 14:15:36 2009
MHD: Tue Feb 24 14:15:37.051 2009 *** Syncing “HomeSync_Mirror”
MHD: Tue Feb 24 14:15:37 2009: /SourceCache/FileSync/FileSync-99.9.7/Agent/Engine/home.m,298 pair->there->home.mhdMountPath is NULL (AcquireHomesForMirrorPair)
MHD: Tue Feb 24 14:15:37 2009: /SourceCache/FileSync/FileSync-99.9.7/Agent/Engine/SyncThread.m,217 err -1 (syncThreadStart)
MHD: Tue Feb 24 14:15:38.097 2009 *** Done syncing “HomeSync_Mirror”
MHD: Elapsed time: 00:01.047

By: Dave R

Dave R — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:44:08 +0000

I thought it might be a DNS issue, but I verified that to be working. I also tried connecting with the IP address instead of the domain name and received the same results.

Strange how the network home share is being mounted for a manual and background sync, but can’t with login/log out. DNS must be working for the manual and background syncs.

I’ll do some more digging. Let me know whether you have any other thoughts.

Thanks!

By: GregN

GregN — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:29:40 +0000

If you’d used dscl . read /Users/cichbev you’d see the OriginalHomeDirectory attribute. In the niutil output, it is listed as original_home_loc.

It looks OK to me. Can you think of any reason you wouldn’t be able to mount the network home share on logout?

By: Dave R

Dave R — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:29:38 +0000

Greg,
The above original_home_loc output should read:

original_home_loc: afp://tj_login.domain.here/TJ_LOGIN.VOL1Teachers/CichBev

By: Dave R

Dave R — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:48:44 +0000

Greg,
I am not exactly sure where to find the output for the OriginalHomeDirectory attribute. I have included the niutil output below from one of our mobile accounts (didn’t see it there either). Hopefully the niutil output helps…if not, let me know. Thanks -DR

niutil -read . /users/cichbevname: cichbev
CichBev_writers_picture: cichbev
authentication_authority: ;LocalCachedUser;/LDAPv3/www.domain.here:cichbev:
original_node_name: /LDAPv3/www.domain.here
original_home: /var/tmp/novell/cichbev
gid: 5001
uid: 5016
original_home_loc: afp://tj_login.domain.here/TJ_LOGIN.VOL1Teachers/CichBev
shell: /bin/bash
realname: CichBev
passwd: ********
sharedDir: Public
picture:
preserved_attributes:
dsAttrTypeStandard:AuthenticationAuthority
dsAttrTypeStandard:Password
dsAttrTypeStandard:NFSHomeDirectory
dsAttrTypeStandard:HomeDirectory
dsAttrTypeStandard:Picture
home: /Users/cichbev

By: GregN

GregN — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:53:09 +0000

This looks at least similar to the problem I dealt with here:

http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/leopard-mobileaccounts-and-nfs-homes/

What does the OriginalHomeDirectory attribute look like for your mobile accounts?