Login Issue and Home folders

[Guest Htech]

Hi,

 

I've recently set up a Snow Leopard Server and managed to get the MAC OS X clients authenticating through active directory. WGM is working fine and users can usually login.

 

The problem Im having is that when i try to login in as any user can be Pupil or staff i get the error message

 

''You are unable to log in to the user account ''*username*'' at this time. Logging in to the account failed because an error occurred.''

 

If i restart the client, then the first user is able to login but the next user cannot.

 

Im not sure what is causing it but i think it may be something to do with the home folders on our fileserver. When i goto the directory utility and tick the box ''Force Local home folders'' this resolves the issue, but then creates other problems such as students saving locally instead of on the network.

 

Any help would be very appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[rbelson]

Hi Htech, what is your domain name? If it is a .local you may get sporadic login success.

[jwpercival]

I'm pretty sure this will be down to how the share that the home folders are stored on is setup. Given that the first login works fine the Mac will be authenticating against the share and then it will be locked and in use for that session using those credentials. It could be that, in testing you are logging in and out so rapidly that the Windows server doesn't get a chance to release the share before you next attempt to login. Usually there will be at least a couple of minutes before another student sits at the Mac to login at the start of a lesson.

 

You may find if you restart the Mac rather than logging out it will release the share, although this isn't really a solution.

 

How are you sharing the home folders from your Windows Server?

[Guest Htech]

Thanks for the help so far

 

restarting the mac does allow the next user to login.

 

Our home folders and setup within active directory directing them to the file server.

 

The home folder path is setup like this;

 

Server/Drive/YearGroup/Homefolder

 

Pupils have Read and List access to the server the drive and the yeargroup and full access to their homefolder.

 

hope this helps.

 

I've just tested and if i do wait a couple of minutes before logging back in it allows the next user to login without a problem. I guess this is acceptable but it could still cause confusion in certain lessons, is there a way of getting it to release the share on logoff?

 

thanks.

[jwpercival]

This should do the trick and stop the Mac from locking the shares. Let me know how you get on!

 

Open the Terminal in /Applications/Utilities when you're logged in as a local administrator.

 

Copy and paste this line into Terminal:

 

sudo open -a /Applications/TextEdit.app /etc/auto_master

 

It'll then ask you to type in the admin password. Finally, in the document that opens stick a # (Alt + 3) in front of the line /Network/Servers -fstab so it should now look like this:

 

# /Network/Servers -fstab

 

Make sure you do it on a Mac that you're not fussed about going wrong, just in case it causes any issues.

[Guest Htech]

As far as i can tell, thats nailed it. It took me a while to give myself permission to alter the file but it all seems to be working now. I can switch users as much as i need to.

 

You've saved me hours of messing about with it.

 

Thanks alot! wish i asked here sooner!

 

[martin_hannah]

Yes! Wish I had a script for that so I could push it out through ARD.

 

M

[HodgeHi]

In theory you could edit your local copy and then send it out using the ARD copy command. It should work in the same way. Just use the Root user when doing the copy and specify the full path as /etc