The home folder for user is not located in the usual place...

When I have had this, it is due to either the server not having a DNS entry with reverse lookup when the server was set up. OR The client can't resolve the DNS address of the server where the home directory is stored. Try looking up the server in Network utility from a client.

Also, can you post the 3 fields from a User's account's Home tab in Workgroup Manager. e.g.

I am having the same issue with 10.4.11 server and 10.4.11 clients. It happens randomly, not always the same user or computer. It usually happens when I have a lab full of users trying to login at the same time. DNS seems to be working correctly. Any ideas?

We had this issue pop up suddenly with one of our 10.4 home directory servers that was serving a mix of 10.5 and 10.4 clients (you'll notice different error messages on each client). The server was on the same subnet as the clients and DNS was working fine. We finally traced it down to the fact that that particular segment of the subnet was actually bridged. The subnet spanned different physical locations. So in effect even though the server and clients were on the same subnet they were each sitting on different sides of the bridge. This was causing timeouts between the clients and the home directory server (authentication was being done on a separate OD Master and was working fine) As soon as we moved the server to the same physical location (building and switches) as the clients things returned to normal. So check your network setup and see if it its a factor. Also check the time it takes to reach the home directory server from the clients. Might be something else causing the long delay.

As a side note I have also seen this error occur if the time on the clients and server is out of sync or the clients can't get the correct DNS information of the home directory server. You might want to check that the DNS server that the clients are using is serving out the correct DNS info. I know you said forward and reverse DNS was working fine but did you try it on one of the affected clients?

Bingo! Was having problems with network accounts not appearing in the list of users in the login window on clients. The server was on Ethernet and the client on wireless via a switch/router. Put them both on Ethernet and now I can see the network users.

Of course this does mean there will be a problem for wireless computers that need to connect to the server.....

Hmmmmm..... Further testing reveals that while it is better, it is by no means reliable using Ethernet.

I suspect that this is a timing issue. When the login window first appears, it only shows local users. A fraction of a second later, it refreshes itself twice. Sometimes this list contains the network users and sometimes it doesn't.

But it's even weirder! Sometimes the login window comes up with username/password text fields even though it is set to show a list of users on the server. These text fields are then sometimes partially overwritten by the list of users, leaving relics of the labels and text fields visible under the list of users.

Sometimes when this happens, none of the elements are accessible with the keyboard or mouse, ie, clicking on a user does nothing. Clicking on the relic of a text field does nothing. What does work is the Tab key will take the focus to the first listed user, but nothing more can be done. The only active options are the shutdown, sleep and restart buttons.

This seems to happen more when no-one is logged in rather than when Fast User Switching is being used. Sometimes logging out shows the night sky screen and no login window 😟

The most reliable choice seems to be to set the login preferences in WGM to ask for username and password.