Help with configuring users home folders

[stoney101]

Hi all...I am wondering if anyone give me a hand with the following issue that we would like to resolve.

 

The majority of the PCs we have are windows based and are managed using AD and GPO. User accounts are also managed and created through AD.

 

We have a suite of 15 iMacs running OS X 10.8.5 and an Xserve running OS X 10.9.4 with OS X Server 3.1.2 running Open directory and Profile Manager.

 

I have set up the 'golden' or 'magic' triangle configuration where the macs are bound to both AD and OD and so far everything seems to be working, the users are able to login in to the macs with their active directory credentials but the bit we want to change has to do with the home folders. At the moment we have the option 'Force local home directory on startup disk' disabled which is how we would like to have it so that the users can access documents created on PC on macs and vice versa now this does work however, whenever a user logs into one of the macs for the first time it creates all of the home folders (desktop, documents, music etc.) in the root of the users folder. If the user logs back into a windows based machine they can see all of these new folders within their documents so for example a user will login go to their documents folder and within that folder there will be another folder called documents which is where the macs save to. Is there any way of setting it up so that the macs create all these folders within another folder for example creating a folder names mac documents within the root of the users documents and have the mac create the required desktop, documents, music etc folders within that folder.

 

So to sum up basically we want to make the macs point to a location other than the root so that it stays nice and organised and the users don't get confused by having a folder called documents within their documents.

 

Apologies in advance I know i'm not very good at explaining things very well. I should also mention I 'm not the best when it comes to Macs

Edited August 1, 2014 by stoney101

[AntonioRocco]

What you're asking is not going to be easy because OS X's home folder structure is designed to be created within the user's root folder. You could create a bespoke script (more on this later) that might possibly do this on first login though? However doing so could hamper a successful log out and potentially successive logins may not occur because the OS won't be able to locate the user's root folder properly and decide to create them all over again!

 

Things could get extremely messy and confusing within a very short space of time. It's also not realistic to try and apply a policy that instructs every text-capable application written for the platform not to create documents within the 'mac' documents folder.

 

There are some potential solutions though. You could simply ignore it and tell everyone "that's the way it is." Or you can instruct students to navigate to the 'correct' documents folder when saving in whatever application they're working in. This solution has benefits because it allows the students to 'learn' how to navigate the mac OS finder as well as the application itself 'remembering' the location of the 'correct' documents folder.

 

The problem with bespoke scripts is there's no way of knowing what changes Apple will make to their OS resulting in any future updates potentially stopping the script from working correctly. It's OK to fire-fight a problem but to keep going back to put out the same fire over and over makes no real sense and is potentially a waste of manpower and resources.

 

Hope this helps?

 

Antonio Rocco (ACN)