Windows/SMB home folders

Question

Windows/SMB home folders

Hi;

I've recently switched to OS X from Windows Server, and I'm running an XServe as a Windows PDC. I'm trying to create home folders for the users, but I'm having some trouble getting SMB to do its thing.

I'm following the directions in the User Management PDF manual, page 120. I've enabled 'share this file and its contents' for /Users in Workgroup Manager, but when I get to step 7, there's no option for 'SMB Export Settings'. I select 'SMB', but there's no option for 'Export this item and its contents to...'. Under 'Network Mount', I can see 'Enable network mounting of this share point', but only for AFP and NFS (neither of which I need), not for SMB/CIFS. Perhaps I'm missing something, or perhaps it does SMB straight out of the box and I don't need to do anything, but I'm a little perplexed.

I've also tried to create new users in the Workgroup Manager under /Users (e.g. /Users/johnsmith), but when I select 'Create Home Now' and then 'Save', the folder /Users/johnsmith is not created. Presumably this should be done automatically - if so, why might it not happen? I've checked all the necessary permissions on /Users (I'm using the diradmin account, and the 'admins' group has read/write access). If I create the folder manually, will that work, or should I worry about figuring out why it's not being done?

Please excuse me if these are newbie questions, but I'm rather used to Windows having different sets of problems 🙂

XServe G5 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Feb 1, 2006 8:26 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 1, 2006 8:37 AM in response to Dan Soderholm

A further note - I've tested connecting to my OS X server from a Windows machine. I can browse the shares - there's a shared folder called johnsmith (well, called the real username) but when I try to connect it doesn't accept any username or password (in the form "domain\username"), including the Administrator account. Is this because there's no actual folder on the hard disk corresponding to this share? It's not listed in /Users in the Finder, or under Share Points in the Workgroup Manager, but it's definitely there when I try to browse with a Windows client. The plot thickens...

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Answer 2

criss

Level 3

995 points

Feb 20, 2006 7:46 AM in response to Dan Soderholm

well not sure what ur asking but this is what i do

Set a sharepoint for home folders in WGM
Set it to share via SMB under Protocols, Windows, make sure the access group is the same group as ur windows users
Set a sharepoint for profiles in WGM
Set it to share via SMB etc etc
Create a user, then under windows, set a profile path (profiles share) and a home folder path (home folder share).

login as windows and thier folder is mounted under my computer as the drive letter set under windows in users accounts.

simple and works, do not use virtual Home Folders,

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