Folder redirection symlink replaced with folder - nightmare!

[iSteve]

Hi all,

 

We are running Profile Manager with our machines and using the com.apple.MCXRedirector preference to redirect the entire ~/Library folder for our users to the /tmp folder on the machine to prevent issues with cache file speed and Keychain lock-outs. This has been working perfectly for the last 3 weeks, however today we have found that the symlink to the user's library folder, redirecting it to /tmp, gets replaced with a hard, network based Library folder when the user opens an application. We can watch this happen:

1)User logs in. Their home folder has no library folder or symlink ie it is clean. The preference creates the symlink to /tmp as expected

2)The desktop loads on the client machine. The user launches an app, eg Safari

3)The symlink file in the home folder is replaced or converted to a normal folder called Library. The machine falls over and beachballs. Safari moans that the Keychain is not accessible etc

 

We had thought that maybe something had gone awry with Profile Manager, however we have a few legacy machines which are not yet on Profile Manager, which we are managing with Workgroup Manager - these too have started behaving in the same way above.

 

The Workgroup Manager and Profile Manager services are on two separate machines with no interaction between to two, so we are not sure what is causing this identical symptom on two separate systems.

 

The only thing we have not done is restart our (Windows) file servers, incase there is something odd going on here, however I can't see why there would be, and if there was why it would be related to this odd symlink to folder conversion which is happening.

 

If anyone has any advice I would be really happy to hear it!