AD integration with separate Mac Home Directory

[Ev0]

Hello all,

 

So I'm working on a Golden Triangle setup where the users home folder is their AD windows home but the Mac users want a separate home directory which is on its own storage shared from a mac mini running.

Here is the problem, we've unable to get the Mac home to replace the windows one when logging into the Mac so we have settled for using the Windows Home as the main location and creating an Alias on the desktop pointing to their user specific Mac home.

This seemed like a simple task; we mounted the mac home directory using WorkGroupManager and the users windows home is mounted as their default location for the document and desktop folders. We then made a script to create the alias:

 

#!Bin/Bash

ln -s /Volumes/UserSecondHome/$LOGNAME /home/$LOGNAME/Desktop/MacHome

 

This script works when run manually or when created into a app using Automator. However if we try to run it as part of a LoginHook or through WorkGroupManager nothing happens.

We're on our last day of the job tomorrow, typically what seemed like the simplest thing to do is now the biggest problem.

 

The techs do not want to move away from AD integration due to increase in user management and the users do not want to use the Windows Home directories due to disk space limitations. So this setup is a compromise, we don't believe a Golden/Magic triangle setup should work this way but are doing our best to make it work.

 

Any thoughts why this script would not work as a loginhook? Could it be Root use is running the script and the $LOGNAME is becoming root instead of the users name?

Irritatingly there was a script which did this same thing on the old mac 10.6 setup, but it no longer works on 10.9.

 

Thanks

Ev0

[Blue_Cookeh]

What was the 10.6 script? We may be able to adapt it to work on 10.9.

 

EDIT: Just realised you're probably finished on this job...

[Quackers]

We do this, well the alias part for folder redirect, but i created it as an App using Platypus (Its free), which converts any script to an executable then copied that to every Mac and used Profile Manager which is the successor to Workgroup Manager to run that program at login (not using Login hooks).

[Ev0]

Thanks guys, well a lot changed in the end. We actually ended up scrapping the app, despite how it started randomly working. And used a script we put together from other sources which checked the user wasn't local admin, then created the documents folders and alias. Packaged this together and had the package replace the com.apple.loginwindow.plist so it ran the scripts as a loginhook.

I've found Mavericks to be quite temperamental. I've since heard that Apple are moving away from networking, and the current stance is 'Users should work on the same iMac in a suite everytime'. Which is how they are meant to be used, but not exactly helpful for a school network!

Also if anyone wonders, always "force a local home" on an iMac binding to AD as Mavericks corrupts the permissions on a Windows home folder when it created the Documents and library folders. I've been looking at creating some symbolic links to redirect the local documents to network location but to be honest I've got this working now and don't really want to poke the bear.

Cheers.