Windows Home Directory Mapping Problem

[jgmitchell]

I have set up our Music Macs to map the students' Windows home directory on login, and for most students it works. However, for some it doesn't create the shortcut in the dock.

This appears to happen randomly where students can see their home directories on one Mac but not another, yet another student will have no issues at all.

I have compared students' accounts for any issue but they are all set up correctly.

 

I've seen on other posts that its been suggested to check the map the local drive tick bock in the directory utility, but this has not helped.

[jgmitchell]

Now getting an issue where a pop up will appear saying "the share does not exist on the server......"

I have managed to get some accounts to map the windows documents ok but have no idea why most don't work.

[HodgeHi]

UNC patch will be case sensitive for macs. Ensure that the correct case has been used for all accounts. For example \\servername.example.com\StudentShare$

 

Note the capital S. If the share name is capitalised then the UNC path will need to be too. It has to be exact.

[furby]

Check them out in directory utility, might show the problem

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mac/141311-ad-od-user-folder-default-save.html

[jgmitchell]

furby, thanks for that link. I've tried what you have suggested on the other post. Some users can access their documents and their paths are mapped correctly. Whereas others cannot.

We are starting to think it could be something to do with cached profiles, but this is purely a wild guess as we are so out of ideas.

[Mustang]

What happens if you reboot in between the students logging on? does the problem still exist ?

[jgmitchell]

The problem is still there. Seems to happen very randomly, on different Macs with different users. Whereas other users on the same Macs can access their documents sometimes. Extremely annoying and very unreliable.

[Mustang]

Can you post the output of "ls -ale /Volumes" from terminal when the user is having the issue.

[furby]

For the users that can't do you get any obvious errors? For those users do they have the correct home path in Directory Utility?

 

Unless you're using Mobile Accounts, cache shouldn't be a problem. To be honest I found it easier just to wipe (_old) the Library file when I initially had similar issues. Are they all the same version of OS X?

[jgmitchell]

Sometimes we get the error saying that cannot connect to the server. But most of the time it just logs in and doesn't map the drive.

The home path looks correct and all using same version of El Captian.

How did you wipe the library file? Can this be deployed from the server or would i have to do this for every client individually?

[furby]

There's probably some Windows script to do it but I couldn't write it for you.

 

You'd have to do it for each user (~/Library) manually otherwise. Couldn't hurt to try it out on a 1 or 2 users that are having problems.

[Mustang]

Have you had chance to try the command from my post above?

[jgmitchell]

Mustang, I haven't been able to access an account having the issue yet, but will try again asap.

 

At the moment I cannot push settings across to the Macs and no one can log in due to the clients not connecting correctly to the directory on the Mac server.

 

One thing I have noticed is that on the DNS I have input the IP addresses of the Windows DNS servers. And have also had to put in the loop back address as if I remove it, it seems to break the whole setup and I cannot even access the profile manager settings...

[jgmitchell]

The server was setup with DNS running. We have now turned the service off and it makes no difference.

Any ideas?

[slancaster]

We had a trouble with SMB and our new SAN,similar quirks.

 

Is your problem user based or machine based?

[jgmitchell]

It seems to be completely random. Some users can get documents on certain macs but not others on the same Macs.

[slancaster]

Hmm... so by "home folder" do you mean just the shortcut on the dock? Or do you mean full access to the home folder? Can all users click on "Go" and then "Home" in finder?