Moving from "standalone" users to Open Directory users

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Moving from "standalone" users to Open Directory users

Having recently moved all the client machines at home from Windows to Mac, I'm now awaiting delivery of a Mini to replace the windows server that fell over and died a couple of weeks ago (which ran SBS 2008) which I'm intending to use for largely similar functionality - email, remote access, file sharing etc.

Each of the three macbooks has their own user account (mine, partner, daughter) but I'm wondering whether it's worth switching to OD-based users.

Coming from a windows support/design background I'm well aware that a local account on a windows PC is totally different to that of an Active Directory account so migration from one to the other would require a completely new user profile to be created. Is there a similar situation on OS X? What I'd like to achieve is for each user to be able to log into each mac with a single user account.

As I said, I'm pretty new to OS X so only now starting to get into the finer details of the differences.

Paul

MAC MINI SERVER (LATE 2012), OS X Server

Posted on Nov 24, 2012 2:09 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 19, 2012 9:20 PM in response to peejayk

If you want to migrate, you don't actually have to create all new "profiles" or to use the more OS X term home folders. You can setup OD with your network accounts and either change the path to the users home folder to the current value of the current local home folders, or you can rename the users home folder to the value of the network users home path. After you bind the computer to OD, (kind of like joining a domain) you need to change the ownership on the home folders to the network accounts.

chown -R user:group /Users/HomeFolderName

Substituting the OD account short name for user and most likely staff for group.

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