Mac Server, Windows Domain, AD etc...

[seawolf]

Cheers guys, something to have a crack at this afternoon. What i've noticed too is that when saving a document the user can browse to the hard drive by clicking on the computer name. I only want them to be able to save to their home folder & nas box that we have. I know there will be a world of hurt when kids start saving stuff to the local drive then panic that the "network has deleted their work" when they don't see it in their home folder on another machine. Anyone know how to do this...There's lots of stuff on the web to do with running terminal commands, but don't fancy pasting these straight in without knowing what they are doing. Sure there will be some way to script hiding a drive on login. I'll be glad when these are done, i'll never curse group policy & active directory again.

 

Thanks again for all of your help with this. Has anyone done the ACSP training? How did you find it?

 

Have you actually tried to save data to the local drive? The only location a non-admin user has permission to change or write to is the Users/Shared location and their own User directory IF they are not using a network home. If you are using network homes, the only place they could save anything locally is the /Users/Shared location. If users do that, they would know they aren't saving to the network and they would really have to go looking for it. So, I would be inclined to say bad luck to them.

 

Of course, you could always set your images to restrict access to the Shared directory to prevent even that. Just make sure you don't use any apps that rely on using the Shared directory to function properly. There shouldn't be nay or many properly written ones that do. sudo chmod 664 on that directory should do it. Or Cmd+I on the directory to make the change through the GUI.

[mike86]

yep, they can only save to their users directory.

 

Their home folder gets mapped & put on the dock (guess its setting this through ad as has always done this) can I redirect the users directory to this?

[seawolf]

yep, they can only save to their users directory.

 

Their home folder gets mapped & put on the dock (guess its setting this through ad as has always done this) can I redirect the users directory to this?

 

Sounds like you didn't set the users up to use a Network Home then. To do that, untick "Force local home directory on startup disk" when you bind the computer . Here's another tip about redirecting the cache folder to the local disk to improve performance

 

http://houseofmac.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/os-x-network-home-folder-redirection/

[mike86]

Bingo That's done the trick & I've added the home folder to the side bar, However since setting that the home folder isn't being put on the doc anymore, and setting it to add it in WGM doesn't work, however it will add the documents folder?!

 

Also I've set to simple finder because I only wanted students to browse their home folder however if this is not on the doc, they have no access to it at all, other than when saving...I can give back full finder, but then they would be able to edit finder sidebar preferences which is defeating the object of locking them down..Ideas?

[seawolf]

Bingo That's done the trick & I've added the home folder to the side bar, However since setting that the home folder isn't being put on the doc anymore, and setting it to add it in WGM doesn't work, however it will add the documents folder?!

 

Also I've set to simple finder because I only wanted students to browse their home folder however if this is not on the doc, they have no access to it at all, other than when saving...I can give back full finder, but then they would be able to edit finder sidebar preferences which is defeating the object of locking them down..Ideas?

 

You can set MCX finder preferences to "Always" so they can't edit those preferences. I would stay away from simple finder unless these are really young students, it's just TOO simple, and limiting. As for the network home on the dock, I believe that's a consequence of using the network home for the logged in account. If you turned on the option to show "Connected Servers" n the desktop in Finder preferences then they would be able to see the network home mount on the desktop.

 

I think you are probably trying to force OSX into the model often used for Windows (and that we use for Windows), but I've found that we don't have nearly as much problem with students trying to mess around with the settings or saving docs to the wrong place with the Mac compared to Windows. Some students don't even realise they can click the triangle when saving to choose a destination other than Desktop, Documents, Movies, Pictures, or Music. And that's actually a good thing. The searching on the Mac is so good there isn't a need to use the traditional hierarchical folder structure. Most of the time, students make a mess of this anyway and forget where they saved something. If they save everything at the top level of the directory and learn to search with spotlight it works out better.