Folder Redirection

Question

Folder Redirection

I have 400 student users.

They all have network home profiles limited to 50 megs. (kept it small due to traffic)

I also set up on another server a work directory for each student. ie: /StudentWork/Joe Smith

The idea would be to have students save their work here and not their home profile.

2 issues:

Student (and users for that matter) do not listen.

And iMovie only saves to ~/Documents.

Is there a way to redirect ~/Documents to the Student Work Folders? I have been experimenting with Folder Redirection in MCX but am getting quirky results.

Thanks.

Posted on Oct 18, 2010 11:24 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 19, 2010 12:29 AM in response to jklingerSrvrAdmin

Replace all the ~/Documents with a symlink that points to the second server. Caveat is that you have to mkdir all the new Documents folders, and repeat both ends of the process for each new batch of students.

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Answer 2

Oct 19, 2010 11:22 AM in response to jklingerSrvrAdmin

Do you suggest to do this through WGM and MCX Folder redirection?

Or through the Finder? With something like SymbolicLinker?

I have been working in the WGM with Folder redirection and it has been "flaky".

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Answer 3

Oct 19, 2010 11:40 AM in response to jklingerSrvrAdmin

Nope, from the command line, using 'ln -s'.

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Answer 4

Oct 19, 2010 11:45 AM in response to Antoine Durr

Cool.

Would this be an example of a valid symlink command:

ln -s ~/Documents afp://server.domain.edu/SharePoint/Student Name

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Answer 5

Oct 19, 2010 1:30 PM in response to jklingerSrvrAdmin

ln -s ~/Documents afp://server.domain.edu/SharePoint/Student Name

Actually, the reverse: ln -s <existing_location> <symlink_name>

Note that you should probably first 'mv' existing ~/Documents to something like ~/Documents_original, so that you don't trash anything they might have had in there in the first place.

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Answer 6

Oct 20, 2010 1:33 AM in response to Antoine Durr

OK. I made the Symlink (from the server) and placed it in the Home Directory of the student.

ln -s /StudentWork/2014\ Students/Student\ Name/Documents /StudentDirs/2014\ Students/studentname

The Symlink works when I test it from the server.

However, when I try to log in as the student the Alias is broken. If I try to fix it the AFP shares are grayed out.

Is it not possible to Symlink to a network volume? Or do I need to use another protocol?

Thanks agin.

jk

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