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Can't sync home folder

I am trying to setup network users on Open Directory and having the home folders sync over the network, but when I log in on a workstation, I get the following error: The sync could not complete because your network home at “(null)” does not allow writing. Please help!

iMac 24, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Oct 19, 2011 6:48 PM

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39 replies

Apr 26, 2012 7:19 AM in response to Jonathan Melville

It took me a week of reading the forums to finally get the login to work..and then finally realizing after reading more that I had to go into Workgroup Manager and turn on the Mobility and Login preferences for the user.

(of course that couldn't be included in the LION SERVER app side - that would make it to easy to setup).


Under MOBILITY


Turned on/selected


"Create mobile account when user logs in to network account"

"Require confirmation before creating mobile account"

"Show "Don't ask me again" checkbox


Create home using:


"Network home default sync settings"


Options:


Never


All the other options are NEVER


After that...that was the point I could login each machine with the sync icon on each menu bar and no issues about not being able to find the network home folder...just can't "Write" to the folder.


When I manually sync..here is what I get.

User uploaded file

Apr 26, 2012 8:04 AM in response to Kimbakat

When I logged into another computer...same thing.

Doesn't even sync the desktop background.


The idea really...and I can't figure out why this is so difficult to get the home folder to sync EVERYTHING about the user's desktop and preferences...this would include documents and apps they install. (I would also think their iTunes accounts along with their app purchses) All preferencial to the user's experience.


You would think Apple would have this locked down. I don't even have any Windows in the mix.


Frustrating..so much time setting up and configuring for something that should be simplified...for at least the mac users.

Apr 28, 2012 11:14 AM in response to Kimbakat

Can you open afp://mcpserver.com/Volumes/MCP Shared/Users/Chris in Finder on your client machine? Perhaps that is the wrong network path. In order to see Volumes on the server, you need to be an admin on the server (I think). I remember that I had some write access issues with the default mobile home directory installation, so I ended up moving my mobile home directories to the same directory on my server as the local accounts. So on my server, all of my users' home directories (mobile or local) were stored under /Users.


For my mobile account, my home URL is afp://myserver/Users/joe, and my Full Path is /Network/Servers/myserver/Users/joe.


Also on the server, under the settings for Sharing, I enabled File Sharing for my Users folder, and gave everyone read access. Then I made sure under Workgroup Manager that the home directory for the user is set correctly.

Apr 30, 2012 9:43 AM in response to jwmartin83

jwmartin83 - Ok...I set it up to this:


All of my users' home directories (mobile or local) were stored under the Server's HD/Users folder.


Accounts/Users - Edit - Full Path is /Network/Servers/myserver/Volumes/Server HD/Users/chris.

User uploaded file


For my mobile account, my home URL is now afp://myserver/Users/chris



User uploaded file


And the users home folder share point.

User uploaded file


Rebooted the server and computer.


This is the ERROR now saying "...connecting to the server..server may not exist."


User uploaded file

Apr 30, 2012 10:03 AM in response to Kimbakat

Two questions....

All of my users' home directories (mobile or local) were stored under the Server's HD/Users folder.

How did those home directory folders get there? Did you make the folders yourself or did you allow the Server.app to make them for you?


Next question, the client thinks your server is located at 'mcpserver.com'. Are you 100% sure that is correct? Are you sure it's not something like server.mcpserver.com? What is the hostname of your server? Can you successfully ping the address 'mcpserver.com' and recieve a response from the server, with it's static IP that is on your subnet? When happens if you do this in terminal: dig mcpserver.com

Apr 30, 2012 10:21 AM in response to Jonathan Melville

No..Those user folder were created by duplicating the original admin folder. When I would login..the subfolders appeared in the user folder....I had them on another internal HD and copied them over earlier today after seeing your instructions about having them on the main HD User folders. We have some data in them...and we originally wanted to host the users folder on another internal drive. I had followed other forum instructions for doing that..but since that never got to work..I jumped onto this forum.


Yes..the mcpserver.com is the only name I have anywhere listed anywhere on the server. Hostname is listed as mcpserver.com.


I decided to start a fresh network login account on one of the remoted machines..Now when I try to login as new network account I get an error "You are unable to log in to the user account "chris" at this time. Logging into the account failed baecause an error occurred."


Now I can't even log into the accounts on a remote machines. I feel like I took 10 steps back..by remapping the home folders.

Apr 30, 2012 10:30 AM in response to Kimbakat

I'm not sure your DNS is right... Please do this, go to terminal on your server and type hostname. What does it say?


Again in terminal on your server, type sudo changeip -checkhostname, what does it say?


On your client, what is the address of the DNS server that it's pointing to? Is this address the LAN address of your server?


EDIT: I also think it's weird how you created your home folders. It's always best to let Server.app create the home folder for you, but if you're migrating a home folder from somewhere else, you've got to make sure the permissions on that folder are appropiate for the user that it's assigned to or it's gonna break.


Message was edited by: Jonathan Melville

Can't sync home folder

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