TomH

Are you using live or local home folders ? Tom

Assuming you require a shortcut to a folder you could use a symbolic link : ln -s "/Volumes/Destination" "~/Desktop/Shortcut" Tom

Have you tried using dsconfigad with the -f flag to force the unbind in the command line, much more reliable than the GUI.. Tom

Take a look at the volume with repquota -a this should indicate the quota used space etc. Tom

fs_usage to output just the files being accessed to see what its doing with the file system... Are you mounting the home folders over SMB ? which a few mac applications do not handle well due to attributes and such so to rule that out try it with a forced local home folder, with a home folder hosted on a mac server or a windows server with ExtremeZ-IP which will essentially enable your windows server to act like mac file servers ( Integration: The Technical Bit - Jigsaw Systems Ltd ) . You could also look at redirecting any offending files to the local drive...

Hi HodgeHi, What sort of bandwidth are you putting through your server to load up the CPU's so much ? Especially with SL and the new servers i am finding AFP to be pretty efficient, i look after several sites with servers with 2 x 10GB aggregated links that are not hitting the CPU's limits but as you correctly say do chew through available RAM :-( Although finding storage to keep up with the network bandwidth is becoming more and more of a problem. Tom

Its probably going to struggle to work with live home folder for some of that work, you could work with local home folders to retain the performance of the Mac's and then a push pull model to the Mac Mini server... but then you may as well just integrate them into AD to save you having to create separate user accounts and use the Mac Mini for lock down and some storage.. You could script the dynamic creation of a folder (on the server) for each student that logs on and automatically mount this on there desktop with some work.. end users wont notice a drop in performance because they are still working local and you gain control over the mac's and presumably a standardised image. Tom

Tested and it does

What are the classroom mac's being used for is the key question ?

Hi Guys, These .local issues are generally resolved in 10.6.4 where we have them installed, be careful with mDNSResponder as its now rolled in with DNS. Tom

Good news !! Feel free to add a thanks ;-)

Guys, As above I specify the proxy and any bypass's that are required in WGM as well as the software update URL and then run the softwareupdate -i -a as root from remote desktop, works like a charm

No problem, glad it worked ! Anyone working with live home folders can use a script to replace everyones plist with the required on as a fix until apple sort out the MCX varient of this.

VMware for me... although parallels often comes out as having better performance where graphics are concerned.

OS 4 is generally much quicker, im a big fan ! iPhone just gets better with every OS release, anyone who had OS 1 will remember the early days :-/

Just a heads up, but if the server set DNS up for you it would indicate that the DNS running on your Windows DC's is not providing a forward and reverse lookup for the MacServer which should be corrected as its likley to cause future problems. OS X is very sensitive when it comes to DNS. Have you sync'd the time to one of your windows DC's ? Tom

I just use a USB stick with a copy of 10.5 and 10.6 WGM depending on the build i wish to manage, OD where managed preferences are concerned is essentially just a store for information (the plists) it doesn't care what that information is. So you can manage 10.5 clients with a 10.6 server, and 10.6 clients with a 10.5 server without issue there are obviously newer MCX that only the 10.6 clients will understand but thats just progress. The 10.5 OD will store all the functionality as far as MCX is concerned of 10.6. As always.. im not sure Apple will support this and you can never mix 10.5 and 10.6 servers in a OD master / replica situation. Tom

Its been a while since i have used Kanaka i would say the options are : Include com.apple.sidebarlists with the appropriate link in the default home folder template folder, if Kanaka builds the home folder from this location then this will work for all new user home folders. Or use managed preferences with a local or open directory to apply the com.apple.sidebarlists to the client enforceing the setting upon users. Tom

Ghost is fine to clone to another mac that already has a suitable bootcamp partition, however deploy studio is the best tool where a existing bootcamp partition doesn't exist as it will restore the fake MBR etc. You have to be very careful if you do a straight clone of OSX in a environment where you are going to be binding it to directory services. Tom

What method have you used to integrate into Novell , something like Prosoft Netware as this will determine you options. Tom

@mbrunt I would use managed prefs to supply as much as possible, for some of the more awkward items such as some of the Adobe stuff you can run a simple login script that will copy all files over on a new users login and only on there first login. This is how i tend to do it. Tom

Instead of scripts, why not just use mobile accounts that never sync (or if they do just sync preferences) and set a timeframe after which the local account is deleted. This way every user gets a loal home folder, that is created from the default templates and deleted after a period of time, no need to worry about keychains etc. Can all be done and managed through Workgroup Manager and is much simpler and efficient. Tom

Templates are probably best for you having re read you initial post they are found within workgroup manager at the bottom pretty central, just create a preset from your existing group, using the menu and then with that selected (so test) in my image create a new group, it will then have identical settings. http://tomholbrook.co.uk/Presets.png And just for fun : Yes its command line..we all hate them but you cant do it through a GUI without using templates and thats only for new group creation, not for applying a set of existing Managed Preferences to an existing group so its not really that great. DSCL gives you the option to backup existing Managed Preferences and then overwrite then with the new ones that you require, and more importantly in their entirety or for individual keys. Top tip, its also a good way to script the management of local machines without the need for a xserve which is ideal for small environments. Hmmm that man page doesn't seem to be complete examples would be : To export the current group to a plist file. mcxexport . -o /ODPlists/export.plist To import a plist file containing the managed preferences to the current group. mcximport . /ODPlists/export.plist The examples are for a complete set of keys, you could be more specific and specify for example com.apple.desktop if you needed to batch update the desktop wallpaper for a whole load of groups. The more you use the backend tools with OD the more you realise the GUI hardly scratches the surface. Depends what functionality you require, if its just a one off copy for a new group then use Templates within the GUI, but at least you will now be aware of the options Tom

I personally prefer to do this through DSCL it's the easiest and certainly my preffered way of copying the managed preferences for a group and then applying them to another group and will ensure you only copy managed preferences. I would take a look at the man page for DSCL. Tom

Hi Paul, The plist is entered into the augmentconfiguration within workgroup manager, so it's more of a entry than a file I suppose. I'll dig some more links out for you when I'm back in the office next week, I think bombich has some automation scripts for creating your users augmented records. Tom