Comments on: More on Portable Home Directories

By: ScottS

ScottS — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:56:11 +0000

I’ve managed to get Tiger OS X Server playing nice (sort of) with Windows 2003 Active Directory just recently. All of the home directories for the AD accounts go back to a folder on the OS X server and PHD on the Mac side seem to sync OK. Mobile accounts on the Macs seem to work and sync as well.

It wasn’t without issues though – setting home directories for AD accounts under the OS X Workgroup manager returns an error, but still sets the home location (weird eh?). Luckily I was able to get it all working without having to change the AD scheme – that was a last resort. The Windows clients aren’t any the wiser and I’ve had no issues with them using a share on the OS X box.

Little quirks with the Apple clients – the odd mounting of the root home directory here and there and trying to access the Login Items on the client locks up System Preferences. Makes changing login items a real pain, but you can only change so much to an AD account under the Workgroup Manager on the OS X side.

I’m running Leopard 10.5.2 myself (the rest of the clients are Tiger 10.4.11 machines), but so far I don’t think it’s quite ready for AD integration – the login process takes at least 5 mins (with home dir sync’ing) and coming out of a lock screen saver takes a minute or so. Haven’t gotten deep into it yet as I’ve been tweaking/fixing odds and ends on the OS X client machines.

Jeff – can online imagine 1500 iBooks! (though that was posted over a year and a half ago) as I’ve only about 8-10 Mac clients.

Thought I’d drop a comment as I’m in the same boat.

By: Adam Wolf

Adam Wolf — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:12:39 +0000

Looking forward to it, Greg!

By: GregN

GregN — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:45:40 +0000

I’ve got Mobile Accounts working in our environment under Leopard now – I’ll try to write something up soon, but the basics are the same as under Tiger…

By: paulo

paulo — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:24:39 +0000

in client Directory Utility :
rfc2307 customised with added attribute Users: HomeDirectory
mapped to apple-user-homeurl

in the DS
apple-user-homeurl =
‘home_dir”url’smb://home.server.com/username/’/url”path”/path”/home_dir’
[the inverted commas represent angle brackets...]
– moving the ‘path’ value to be part of the url enabled fast user switching for network users
– the trailing slash at the end of the url value is critical. ie. username/

hope this makes sense

By: GregN

GregN — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:17:58 +0000

Sounds like it’s working better for you than it is for me . Are you using RFC2307 schema, or have you extended the schema and added Apple attributes? I’m using NFS homes rather than SMB, and that might be the most important diffference between our environments.

By: paulo

paulo — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:22:45 +0000

./createmobileaccount -n seemed to work
– User Account prefs – ‘Mobile Account:Settings’ is active and associated home syncing magic appears to work.
Even the new replacements for MirrorAgent.log – the FileSyncAgent group – seem a bit more informative
– thanks very much for the tip

By: GregN

GregN — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:18:35 +0000

I’m having lots of problems with mobile accounts/PHDs in our environment under Leopard as well. I have no real solutions as of yet, but I need to post some of my findings so far.

I can actually now create mobile accounts (RedHat DS LDAP and NFS-automounted homes) but HomeSync is unreliable.

Look at the new createmobileaccount tool in /System/Library/CoreServices/ManagedClient.app/Contents/Resources

By: paulo

paulo — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:44:07 +0000

great work Greg
– was the basis of our successful Tiger MHD implementation with Red Hat DS
– Tho we can get 10.5 clients to use smb home dirs [after editing the new Leopard ldap.conf !] MHDs cannot be created
– I don’t yet have a Leopard Server install to test myself, yet. Looking forward to your updates

By: Adam Wolf

Adam Wolf — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:48:58 +0000

Thanks a million!

By: GregN

GregN — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:59:57 +0000

I wouldn’t expect these to work unchanged with Leopard – there have been significant changes between Tiger and Leopard.
I’ve been having lots of issues implementing PHDs on our environment with Leopard. As I make progress, I’ll post my findings.