Problems with networked home directories?

[griffman]

An anonymous user submitted this potential hint to macosxhints:After an exhaustive review of everything online about using the powerful capability of OS X Server to centralize and server a user's home directory, and numerous real-world bad experiences, I am here to recommend this: AVOID USING THIS FEATURE UNTIL A LATER RELEASE OF OS X.

Our problems (in a small office of 5 users) with networked home directories were so numerous for real power-use of the machines set up as such that I had to migrate everyone's home directory to their own machine's hard disk (local Users dir) to qwell the riot that was about to start...

Numerous and huge problems exist in using Office X with a networked home directory (macros not available, keychain unusable, kernel errors at logout and quit). Many other commercial apps seem equally hosed and confused when used by a networked home directory user. These problems are consistent and so repeatable on multiple Macs it is clear that no one at Apple, Microsoft, or any other vendor, is actually doing any testing of this kind of environment.

All things truly told, using a root domain with NetInfo and serving home directories has a LONG way to go before it works properly for real Mac users in OS X. As I have no direct experience with this topic, I thought I'd ask here before posting this info on hints -- are there generally bad experiences to be had if you run networked home directories via OS X Server? Any feedback?

thanks;
-rob.

[Craig R. Arko]

I'll just say I have yet to have that particular feature work as advertised. Sharing and exporting (via AFP/IP) the home directory seems to go OK, but on the client end the share doesn't automount, it just beachballs. That's been true of all automounting shares I've tried from OS X Server to Client so far.

If someone does have this working, I'd like to feel the magic. :)

[Dr-NiKoN]

Sentralized Netinfo w/ home directories -> clients?

I've seen this in action many times.

"Numerous and huge problems exist in using Office X with a networked home directory (macros not available, keychain unusable, kernel errors at logout and quit)."

What configuration steps have been taken, what troubleshooting steps have been taken?

"Many other commercial apps seem equally hosed and confused when used by a networked home directory user."

Confused in what ways? If the applications are written correctly, they should use Carbon or Cocoa system calls to gather relevant information. These system calls will then search the required domains(User, Local, Network, System). It might be that your applications aren't doing this, thus creating problems. But, this should not happen with MS Office. I don't know what other apps you use. The Classic enviroment also handles this.

"it is clear that no one at Apple, Microsoft, or any other vendor, is actually doing any testing of this kind of environment."

I've been on courses and seminars where this has been done.
You should call Apple's Mac OS X Server Q&A team and tell them this :)
Or just call Apple Support tier 2, and they can help you set it up.

"All things truly told, using a root domain with NetInfo and serving home directories has a LONG way to go before it works properly for real Mac users in OS X."

Netinfo is 10 years old? Or more?
It is working pretty well allready.

"I thought I'd ask here before posting this info on hints -- are there generally bad experiences to be had if you run networked home directories via OS X Server? Any feedback?"

Wolf Wolf.

"I'll just say I have yet to have that particular feature work as advertised. Sharing and exporting (via AFP/IP) the home directory seems to go OK, but on the client end the share doesn't automount, it just beachballs."

Check your configuration of the Automount pane of your shares..
Is the shared configured for automounting to the correct domain?

Read the Mac OS X Server Admin guide, it will tell you about some pitfalls.
Here is one of them:
"Do not use static mounts for home folders"
Something like that might be what the first guy did.

If all else fails, call Apple or ask on the web.

It's strange how people blame the software much of the time.

From the mentors last words:"I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to.
If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up." :)

I actually talked to someone yesterday who had this working between two Mac OS X client machines. Simply be hacking the netinfo database via niutil.

% man netinfo
is a must-read.

nikon

[Edited by griffman to break the quote to fit on screen...no content was changed.]

[Craig R. Arko]

Nice to see that there is success. I'll give it another go sometime soon.

I don't think the info on pages 80-81 of the Admin Guide really does this feature justice. :)

In my case, I can see the (dynamically mounted) share in /Network/Servers/ on the client, but when actually trying to access it - beachball.

[tncook]

So I am tring to get a net info domain set up. There seems to be only a handful of info on Netinfo out there. The Apple Server Admin and Netinfo guides are almost useless. The biggest help i have found are the MacOSX Server technotes by Mark J. Swift (http://pages.unisonfree.net/mswift/osx/00servertips.html). He actually gover over how to set up netinfo parents and children completely.

I am still running 10.1.2 version of Server, i will try updating. I wish that this was a simple and flexable as Mac Manager.

Here is my problem: I can get the domain and the child setup. I can create a user for the domain, but whenever i log in from the child it cant find the Home directory. It is automounted in /Netowork/Servers/ and the home folder is there, but there is nothing inside of it, even though there is stuff on the server.

Here is what i have tried:

-changing the way the users home directory is defined in server admin. (ie, custom, share)

-turning off the automount, but it still mounts.


I feel like I am trying to get a Windows Server to work, not a Mac.

Thanks

[srcleaves]

I recently set up a parented domain on my G4 running OS X 10.1.4 for access from my iBook and my fiancee's PowerBook. For the most part it works pretty well, but when it comes to actually sharing the home directories you really can only choose NFS. The issue with this is that NFS doesn't preserve the resource fork of files, so any app that looks for info in the resource fork is going to have trouble. Unfortunately trying to statically mount AFP exports just doesn't work well at all. The problem is that in order to have it already mounted when the user logs in (because that is where their home is coming from) you end up having the files owned by root:unknown. NFS works fine, as long as you realize many Carbon apps are going to have trouble. The only other issue I have with my set up is that Airport isn't fast enough to share your Applications folder so I have to make sure all the machines have the same set of applications.

[tncook]

This is a lab setting, so all of the computers are the same.

I will try using NFS.

But my problem is that i cant get it to work at all. When i log in to the domain it tells me that it cant find my home folder

thanks

[Dr-NiKoN]

http://www.macosxlabs.org/index.html

While you are there, tell them to make all their documentation available in .pdf format :)

I hate having to browse that stuff in HTML.

"I recently set up a parented domain on my G4 running OS X 10.1.4 for access from my iBook and my fiancee's PowerBook. For the most part it works pretty well, but when it comes to actually sharing the home directories you really can only choose NFS. The issue with this is that NFS doesn't preserve the resource fork of files, so any app that looks for info in the resource fork is going to have trouble.Unfortunately trying to statically mount AFP exports just doesn't work well at all. The problem is that in order to have it already mounted when the user logs in (because that is where their home is coming from) you end up having the files owned by root:unknown."

scrleaves:
I mentioned this above.
Check out the Mac OS X Server Admin Guide - Page 81.

It says under Mount statically: Do not use static mounts for home directories.

nikon

[Dr-NiKoN]

"I'll just say I have yet to have that particular feature work as advertised. Sharing and exporting (via AFP/IP) the home directory seems to go OK, but on the client end the share doesn't automount, it just beachballs."

Craig:
Step 1: Create the share.
http://hildrum.net/alban/General.jpg
http://hildrum.net/alban/automount.jpg

Step 2: Configure the user.
http://www.hildrum.net/alban/user.jpg

Page 63-65 of the Server Admin.

Are you sure you have configured it correctly?
If so, you might actually have some kind of corruption going on.
Check the developer docs to find out exactly what is going while the automount is happening(what preferences are beeing loaded etc.).
Might be some kind of corruption that is causing this.

If you are truly interested in mastering the administration of a Mac OS X Server network, I would recommend becoming an Apple Certified Systems Administrator. Taking the course for that certification is all you need to master Mac OS X Server and client. It's a bit on the expensive side though :(
http://train.apple.com/cert/roadmap.html

I finished ACTC a couple of months ago, and going to try and take the ACSA certification during the fall. :)

nikon

[Craig R. Arko]

OK, I did all that. No joy. I'm certainly willing to believe something is wacked in my NetInfo domain hierarchy setup. It's going to take some time to discover what.

I'll look through the developer docs like you suggest.

PS - I'm not a huge fan of certification programs as a rule; are you convinced of the value of these particular ones?

[ghost]

OK, I have been using a networked home directory for over three months now so here goes.

There are some problems. Most are to do with DNS. You must have properly configured DNS records for your server and ALL your clients. You may run into problems with this if you are also trying to use DHCP. DHCP and netinfo might not play nice unless you are using the DHCP server under OSX server that adds extra fields that netinfo uses for binding. You can use other DHCP server but you have to add the extra fields manually. When setting up Rebooting the servers and client helps. There are some settings that don't hook unless automounter, lookupd, and netinfo are killed and restarted. You can do this without rebooting but some times rebooting is easier. Apple could do some work to make the admin guide and netinfo guide clearer on the setup. Setting up a clone netinfo server can also help. All hell breaks loose if netinfo can't bind to a parent.

Other problems are related to programs having to access your home directory and the end of a LONG alias chain. Example this is my home directory path: /Network/Servers/kraken/Volumes/homevol/Users/shawn. The Keychain can be configured to work, but you must delete all keychains and start from scratch. Mine works so can yours. Eudora works with POP mailboxes but you may run it problems with imap boxes. I am still trying to figure that one out. Report problems you find to the developers of your apps. If you don't report it they may not know there is a problem.

Apple has many if not all of their problems fixed for a future release most likely Jaguar. Hopefully the other developers will also correct their problems.


Shawn

[Dr-NiKoN]

"I'm not a huge fan of certification programs as a rule; are you convinced of the value of these particular ones?"

There are two values, as I see it.
They are Apple's own certification. Should be the most prestigious certifications to have when searching for work. This is the primary reason for certifications.

But, the most important aspect of it, is that you will learn pretty much everything about OS X Server. Which is what I think is important.
The first part: Mac OS X Administration Basics and OS X Server Essentials are pretty straightforward, and doesn't really require a experienced OS X user to attend Apple's trainings. But, in the other 3 you would probably learn alot more than you could ever learn on your own or by reading the admin guide.
I think this is the most important aspects for taking these certifications.

"OK, I have been using a networked home directory for over three months now so here goes. "

Yup, it is actually possible. And I'm pretty sure there isn't any bug in NetInfo.

"All hell breaks loose if netinfo can't bind to a parent."

Almost everything breaks :)

"Apple has many if not all of their problems fixed for a future release most likely Jaguar. "

I don't want to sound like such a mac-zealot, but there aren't really that many problems with NetInfo.

"Hopefully the other developers will also correct their problems."

If they could just follow Apple's API-guidelines, it should work fine.
From what I know these guidelines weren't really clear until OS X 10.1, so some blame could be put on Apple there.

:)

nikon

[tncook]

I have a lab and I want to be able to control the user environment, but also use a NetInfo Server to then authenticate to an LDAP server.

Here is my Idea:
If you create a user with no home dir then they get a generic prefs set (ie Dock, desktop, etc) that they can change to an extent, but none of the changes are saved.

I thought that the UserTemplate Folder was where this information was stored so I created a local user and set everything up how I wanted it, and put the home directory contents into /System/Library/UserTemplate/English.lproj/

Apparently thats not where it is kept when i log in as a user on the NetInfo domain I still get the old prefs, so i tried changing the set on the server, still no dice.

[Craig R. Arko]

Well, I'm now pretty sure something is screwed up in my client system. Darwin actually core dumps when trying to access the automounted volume.

I suppose this may mean clean installs of both server and client, but I'm inclined to wait until the Jaguar release then, since this is not a critical feature for me.

Has anyone else seen this?

[mikael]

one problem we ran into was...
Here at work we are in a mixed eviroment and we was
trying to get networked home directories setup using DHCP.

For some it was no problems at all after reading
http://www.theilgaard.dk/ manual.

But for some of us, nothing did happend then trying to connect.
And that we found was that Microsoft® User Authentication Module (UAM)
For MacOS X v1.0.2, that we had installed to get extra security to login
to Win 2000 servers. After removing that in
Libary/Filesystems/Appleshare/Authentication
all works fine. But we also think that same username local and on the server
can make some problems, but that are we looking into.

maybe not a problem for all but maybe some.

Mikael

[Craig R. Arko]

Originally posted by mikael

But for some of us, nothing did happend then trying to connect.
And that we found was that Microsoft® User Authentication Module (UAM)
For MacOS X v1.0.2, that we had installed to get extra security to login
to Win 2000 servers. After removing that in
Libary/Filesystems/Appleshare/Authentication
all works fine.
Mikael

Mikael, you're a genius! The Microsoft UAM was the source of my problem. Thanks immensely for this hint.

I should have suspected Bill in the first place. :D