Macs and Windows on a network

[pixellip]

Hi there

 

We need to upgrade Mac Server soon........and move on from Workgroup Manager ( which has been simple and stable ). I was just wondering what was involved in getting all the users from Workgroup Manager into Profile Manager.

 

I wanted to put some feelers out as to what people use with their Macs and Windows servers.

Currently we use Acronis Connect and Centrify which on the whole is fine but we are having one or two issues.......Acronis is good in that you can save through AFP to Windows NTFS and Centrify works well with their AD logins.

 

Can I ask other people use setting up a Mac Server with windows shares ( and pupil shares / home directories ) - do you use Samba ? I've read Samba isn't too great and I recall years ago my colleague trying it and running into problems mounting shares and keeping them persistent e.t.c

 

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone else who uses Centrify and Acronis Connect and the reasons for doing so - or how you set your Macs up in a windows network ( do you save to windows shares / mount their window home directories / where do you store their Mac desktops and home areas?)

Thanks for your advice

[pixellip]

From memory ( as I wasn't the person who put our mac system in) the reason we went over to Centrify and Acronis had to do with home directories and Mac users having to log onto the same mac for certain programs ( as some software wanted to save to the local drive) That was years ago now.

Do people here just mount windows home shares via samba and save all their mac stuff into a folder in their windows home area over Samba ( and use Magic Triangle ).

I seem to recall the mounts not staying/being persistent.....

Of course I will go through setting up Profile Manager....just wanted to know how others approach it (

[3s-gtech]

We just mount the home drives, via the setting in Directory Utility. No problems with persistence, but we do have issues with needing to provide local home areas for performance - so users like to save work here and not transfer it to their home areas (see annoying things thread!)

[Arthur]

Do people here just mount windows home shares via samba and save all their mac stuff into a folder in their windows home area over Samba (and use Magic Triangle).

We mount Windows home drives (plus a shared drive) on our Macs using a bash script that runs on login (via Outset). If for any reason the drives disconnect they will reconnect within 10 seconds.

 

Magic triangles are a really old school way to doing things. I just bind to AD.

 

I also use AutoDMG and Imagr for imaging (switched from DeployStudio) and Munki for deploying apps and profiles.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Arthur

[pixellip]

Thank you for all your help and posts over this.

So I am curious........if you open their My Documents on the Windows network - how does the mac home directory sit inside that? (Or do they save locally then copy the data across to their Windows My Documents?).

How do you map the Pictures folder from the Mac to the Pictures folder on the windows network? ( as you are using Samaba and NTFS I presume)

Thanks

[pixellip]

Sorry for this extra question but suddenly thought of it.

 

The other thing I was going to ask concerned keychains. What do you all tend to do about this on your windows network ( with macs ). If someone resets their windows password do you delete their keychain folder? My experience is it's nothing but a complete pain seeing the keychain window popping up all the time. Utter pain!

[diddylord]

We have a few macs here joined to our domain and when a user resets their password there is a prompt on login on the Mac to create new or update key chains

[pixellip]

Cheers diddylord. The trouble is people don't know what to select when this message pops up and what consequences it will have. It's not the most descriptive of boxes if you ask me.

[pixellip]

Yeh so sorry I went a bit offtopic on this post......

If someone could explain how their home directories are set up ( ie how you map from mac>windows with e.g.Documents, Pictures) I'd be grateful - I'm still a bit confused how it works when you mount a windows home directory on a mac and when you save where does it go (e.g Pictures>My Pictures) e.t.c

Thanks

[Stormborn15]

Cheers diddylord. The trouble is people don't know what to select when this message pops up and what consequences it will have. It's not the most descriptive of boxes if you ask me.

 

So what is the right choice ( and consequences? )

[pixellip]

Sorry Stormborn..........I didn't reply here ( I thought others might have something to say about it ).

If you create a new keychain then as I understand it forgets all your other previous passwords to sites e.t.c so these need entering again ( which is a pain for a lot of people with remembered passwords).

Update keychain would be the thing to use.......

[aarongulley]

We mount Windows home drives (plus a shared drive) on our Macs using a bash script that runs on login (via Outset). If for any reason the drives disconnect they will reconnect within 10 seconds.

 

Magic triangles are a really old school way to doing things. I just bind to AD.

 

I also use AutoDMG and Imagr for imaging (switched from DeployStudio) and Munki for deploying apps and profiles.

 

Can I see your script to bind homefolders and shared drives? Please do remove any ip addresses but replace them with 0.0.0.0:user:pass if you have preconfigured passwords.

 

Cheers.

[Arthur]

Can I see your script to bind homefolders and shared drives?

Sure. It's quite long so I have attached it to this post. It should be fairly self-explanatory if you are already familiar with Bash.

 

The user's home directory will be read directly from AD using dscl and mounted automatically, but if you have any additional shares to mount (like I do) these need to be specified on lines 256 and 257. i.e.

 

connectshare "${protocol}" "[color="#FF0000"]fs1.exampledomain.net[/color]" "[color="#4B0082"]Shared[/color]" "[color="#0000FF"]Staff[/color]"
connectshare "${protocol}" "[color="#FF0000"]fs1.exampledomain.net[/color]" "[color="#4B0082"]Shared[/color]" "[color="#0000FF"]Students[/color]"

 

[u]Key[/u]
[color="#FF0000"]Red[/color] = The FQDN of your file server containing the share.
[color="#4B0082"]Purple[/color] = The share name (in my case it's 'Shared').
[color="#0000FF"]Blue[/color] = The AD group the user has to be a member of in order for the share to be connected (in the example above it's 'Staff' or 'Students').

 

On a Mac client

If you don't already have Outset installed, download and install that. Copy the script to /usr/local/outset/login-every, change the permissions/ownership (as shown below) and then logout and in again to test.

 

sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/outset/login-every/networkconnector.sh
sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/outset/login-every/networkconnector.sh

 

To distribute the script to all of our Macs I package it up and then add it to our Munki repo.

 

if you have preconfigured passwords.

This script doesn't contain any passwords since our Macs use Kerberos to connect to Windows shares.

NetworkConnector_v1.2.zip

Edited April 19, 2017 by Arthur
Typo in script name

[pixellip]

That's great Arthur .....really helpful to us all ....thank you .

[aarongulley]

Nice one Arthur.