Sync of Mobile Homes Fails

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mbraun1973 Author

Level 1

25 points

Sync of Mobile Homes Fails

I just finished setting up a MacMini server. Pretty much standard setup. After creating users, groups, etc. I created a computer group called 'MacBooks' and set Mobile managed preferences to give users a chance to create a Mobile Home Vault to work offline.

The users log in, they get asked if they want to create a mobile account. If they accept, a secure vault is created under /Users on the portable mac. The user can work offline, no problem, BUT:

Any attempt to perform subsequent syncs fails. I get this in the console:

+12/1/09 11:10:17 AM HomeSync[498] HomeSync.getSyncSet: [[SFFileSyncManager sharedFileSyncManager] createPHDSyncSetWithName:"HomeSync_Mirror" remoteXMLSpec:"/Users/testuser" mountSuffixPath:"afp://server.boo.com/Users"] returned nil!+

Users can connect to the AFP server w/o issues. Preferences on the server's /User folder look good.

I noticed that when users try to navigate to /Network/Servers/server.boo.com/Users/... they have restricted access to their home folder.

+touch /Network/Servers/server.boo.com/Users/testuser+ would result in "+Permission denied+"

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Message was edited by: mbraun1973

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Dec 1, 2009 12:29 PM

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Answer 1

mbraun1973 Author

Level 1

25 points

Dec 3, 2009 1:25 PM in response to mbraun1973

Fixed the /Network/Servers/server.boo.com/Users privileges issue somehow.

Now when I create a new test user, the account can Sync. No issues whatsoever.
When existing users with their homes on the server connect the first time and set up their portable mobile home on the client, the first sync goes well. Any subsequent attempts to sync fail and I get the same error in the console shown in the original posting of this thread.

It must me some .plist file being copied to the client portable home that screws things up. Haven't found the culprit yet. I'll keep trying.

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Answer 2

mbraun1973 Author

Level 1

25 points

Dec 4, 2009 5:16 PM in response to mbraun1973

OK, here's how I got it to work.

a) Deleted the mobile user accounts from the clients
b) logged into clients with mobile user account and selected NOT to create local vault
c) logged off and on again and the second time I logged on I did select the option to create the local vaults.

Works flawlessly now. Somehow, in the past when I was creating the local vaults right when logging in the first time, only the initial sync would work, anything later would give errors.

Weird.

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Answer 3

Dec 8, 2009 10:14 AM in response to mbraun1973

For the users themselves, what do you have as the path of HOME in WorkGroup manager?

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Answer 4

Robert23

Level 1

4 points

Dec 28, 2009 11:47 PM in response to paulievox

My HomeSync never Synced and is still not working.
On the console i got the same error as described previously.

29.12.09 08:40:45 HomeSync[9983] HomeSync.getSyncSet: [[SFFileSyncManager sharedFileSyncManager] createPHDSyncSetWithName:"HomeSync_Mirror" remoteXMLSpec:"/Users/test" mountSuffixPath:"afp://server.myserver.com/Users"] returned nil!

The connection to afp://server.myserver.com/Users is working!

rgds
Bob

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Answer 5

Robert23

Level 1

4 points

Dec 29, 2009 12:50 PM in response to mbraun1973

ok, i tried today some cases.
homesync dont work when filevault is turned on. i dont know why 😟

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Answer 6

Jan 31, 2010 10:06 AM in response to Robert23

I am experiencing the exact same error. I do not have file vault enabled. So are you saying that it should work if I delete the local account and recreate it?

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Answer 7

Feb 3, 2010 12:56 PM in response to Daryn Sharp

Hi,
I had the same problem. I could solve this problem by restoring the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.FileSyncAgent.plist from backup.

In this file there is the key-element 'havePHDSyncSet' which was set to 'false' when I had the problem. After setting to 'true' syncing worked fine for me. I hope this helps.

Greetings
Christoph

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Answer 8

Feb 11, 2010 9:12 AM in response to christoph4711

Seeing this exact error/behavior.

I changed the havePHDSyncSet key in com.apple.FileSyncAgent.plist from <integer>0</integer> to <true/>. Now my login syncs work, but I am still unable to manually start a home sync from the PHD menulet.

Every attempt to do so pulls up the 'No folders are selected to be synced' warning window. Of course, these are managed clients and the folders that are synced/ignored are, um, managed.

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Answer 9

mmpro

Level 1

10 points

Feb 19, 2010 6:38 AM in response to mbraun1973

Has anyone here been able to get rid of the problem?

I also found this thread which gave (at least me) a new idea what the problem might be:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2341261

Has anyone ever contacted apple support with this issue?

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