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McPatty · Jun 20, 2002, 08:44 AM

I have tried for 4 days now to get Netinfo to work. The Netinfo server is running alright and handle all accout informations correctly. I can log on any client and get in. The problem is that everytime i log in i get an error message that the klient can't find the home directory. I've bin in contact with applel's level2 support and all my configurations seems to be ok but i can't still get to work.
I tried it on 3 diffrent servers and clients. Always with the same error.

Plese someone help me!!!
Anyone that got the same problem?

chris00 · Jun 22, 2002, 05:54 AM

I've been having the exact same problem.

I have 2 machines, one running osx client, and one running osx server. Each has the latest version. I've been trying to create a 2-tiered netinfo shared domain consisting of just a root domain (on the server, with root domain users also stored on the server) to facilitate loggin in to a home-directory from anywhere.

While creating the shared domain was straight-forward, I've been vexed by not being able to actually properly login to the client. (It is possible to login to the server using the root domain account login)

Logging in as the root domain user that I'd set-up using server admin:
The login process took much longer than usual, and once the finder appeared, the finder displayed the error message that the home directory could not be found in the usual place. Hence, no home directory, and pretty much a useless login attempt from a practical perspective.

The symptoms are the same, when viewed through the eyes of the connect-to-server menu: after connecting to the server, the home directory share was greyed-out, consistent with the share already being mounted. (If you try to mount an afp share that is already mounted using the afp://address/share command, then you will get the message that there are no file services available at that URL. In this case, without having explicitely mounted the share, the same message appears). I did not see the share mounted under /Network/Servers.

I've been through almost every combination of settings, short of using DNS (the admin docs always use DNS), or defining the client as a machine (as a child of the netinfo parent) within netinfo. (this is necessary if you have a multi-tiered netinfo hierarchy). Here are a few things I've tried:

I've tried enabling afp guest access. I tried creating a separate directory to share (instead of using the Users directory), enabling auto-mount for root domain users, told the automount to statically mount the share in /Network/. I also tried sharing the home directory iteself. The consequence of this was that I could manually mount the home directory, even though I couldn't mount the enclosing share.
So, I tried using a custom home-directory setting, pointing at the shared home directory with no path. result: couldn't mount the home directory now.

So, there is something wrong somewhere. It is as if the share directory gets half-way through the process of being mounted (and thus cannot be re-mounted), however, is invisible to the file system.

Does anyone have any ideas about this problem?

[ 06-22-2002, 05:58 AM: Message edited by: chris00 ]

kennedy · Jun 25, 2002, 01:48 AM

Have you guys ever gotten it to work?
Or is this your first time? (Just trying to focus on the issues.)

Have you read the Admin Guide? (If you don't know what that is, then answer "no".)

McPatty, are you running OS X Server or trying to setup a server using OS X Client? It sounds like you got netinfo setup for your users, but you are mounting your User partition on the client properly. Where are your user home directories on the server? Can you see them on the client if you hunt for them? If you look at the users' info what is specified for home directory?

Chris, where exactly are your user home directories? What did you specify to file sharing services in Server Admin? How many root domain user accounts do you have? Are some set as administrators? Are some normal users? Have you tried logging into several of the accounts and get the same behavior in all cases?

Not sure I can help... but I do have it *mostly* working on two networks... so maybe.

chris00 · Jun 25, 2002, 06:13 AM

Kennedy,
To answer your questions, I have only really tried 1 to set-up 1 user at a time. However, I've gone through the process a few times. I've tried a user as an admin, no luck there. I've tried creating the user in the Users directory on the server. That didn't work, so I created a net_users directory, shared it to everyone, moved the root-domain user's directory into that directory, and changed the user setup to point to that directory. I've also tried creating a user in that directory. nothing works except login and automount, provided the user's account is not in the automounted share. (I've tried dynamic and static automount). The results are always the same: no home directory, and can't mount the home directory sare.
I don't know what the story is if you use DNS, or if you have a deeper netinfo hierarchy.

What's your experience, and what 'sorta' works, and what 'sorta' doesn't work?

kennedy · Jun 25, 2002, 05:36 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by chris00:
Kennedy,
What's your experience, and what 'sorta' works, and what 'sorta' doesn't work?<hr /></blockquote>Hmmm. I have never bothered setting up DNS on my machine... everyone just talks in 192.168.0.XX speak. So, that's definitely not an issue.

Without using OS X Server, I set up regular OS X to serve network accounts using Netinfo... in that case statically mounting the directories NFS-style. Worked okay.

Then later upgraded to OS X Server, and found it to be MUCH easier and found AFS to work much better than NFS. To do the mounting, I simply defined a share point named 'Users' and specified that to be the location of my Users accounts, each created the standard Server Admin way, automounting the home directories via the share point. Once all of that is setup in the root Netinfo, the only thing that need be done on the client machines is Directory Setup. Works very easy.

With that said, I have occasionally had problems. Whenever my client machines would go to sleep, when they woke back up they would partially lose the network... they would be able to login, but no home directory. Reboot was required. I haven't yet tested to see if the recent update fixed this. My work-around was to set the machines to never sleep.

On my small 2-machine network, one of my dozen accounts will never login with home directory. The only thing peculiar about that account (that I could think of) was that it was an Administrator account. However, setting it to a normal user did not fix the problem. And on my many-machine network, the additional admin account works fine.

Back to your problem... it sounds like you manually were creating users. Did you ever create any users using Server Admin's Users tool?? There's definitely a little magic going on in what Server Admin does.

Brian

chris00 · Jun 26, 2002, 06:41 AM

Kennedy,
It is certainly interesting that you actually managed to get that to work on osx client using netinfo.
NFS doesn't appear to be such a good idea though, given the slight security risk mentioned in the admin guide.

Yes, I've tried been creating the users using the admin tool. I've tried unsharing every share (including volumes) except the Users directory. The one thing I guess may make a difference is using 2 osx server installations rather than client/server..

But for now, I give up.