2 mac's, one home directory?

J

jkazules

Registered
I've been searching for networked home directory information but can't find what I'm looking for.

Simply put, I want the upstairs macintosh running the same version of Jaguar as the downstairs Macintosh to use the same home directory for one user (I don't care if it's all of the users but I only need one). This way, if I need to use the upstairs mac, I can still run my mail program (Entourage in this case), and not have two different sets of e-mail folders. There are other advantages too, like same documents and preferences, etc.

Anyone know how to do this?
 
I heard from someone using the same home-directory for two os (panther and jaguar) on his machine with 2 different partitions. I don't know how he did this, but since it works, it should be possible over network too, right?
 
I had the problem to allow my wife to access the same database of our e-mail (eudora, the king!).

I put the eudora folder (the one the program creates in my document folder) in my public folder and set staff permissions to admin (clicking apply to contents button)

My wife has an admin account and she can check, write, save and send mail, just as I can.

I set her login items to use the eudora settings from the folder in my public. If you just start eudora from applications it wants to make a new "eudora folder" in documents.

I don't know how entourage works - except to say eudora works better - or whether this set up will hold up over a network, but it gives us fully synchronized mail. Not really sync d, it is the same.

This could solve the mail problem, but it doesn't give you the added benefits of access to documents, unless you make the public folder the place you save most of your work.
 
One thing I might mention is that if you should not run your mail program on both machines at the same time. I am 98% sure tat it will not deal well with having two processes operating in the same files. Because this is for email why don't you just use IMAP as this is precisely the situation it was designed to handle?

-Eric
 
For your mail... yes IMAP may be the solution (.mac is an IMAP provider).
For sharing documents, one mac should have it in a shared folder, then a link to this folder from the other mac should do it.
 
right! I heard it should work with a simple link to the folder too, as chevy said. Try this and post your results
 
Does that mean my solution won't work if (when) i go to Panther? Right now, logging out closes eudora, but with quick switching it won't quit my programs.

My server doesn't do IMAP
 
To answer your question, as no one else seems to have done, or even looked at. Yes, you can use a remote volume or directory as a home directory, but i can't give you specific details on doing it. Try searching for "remote home folder"+mac in google or somewhere similar.
 
You will always have to have the remote machine on before doing this, otherwise your mac will fail to load any desktop.

One way to do it is to rename your current home directory on the client too anyting else. Use terminal for this process.

Connect to the remote machine that has the directory you want to share.

In terminal > df -k (to list the connected drive)

(Its will be something like /Volumes/"directory"

> cd /Users
> ln -s /Volumes/"directory" "directory"

The above makes a link in /Users locally, to the target directory on the remote machine.

This is a rough way to do it and its not great but will work.
 
I like to share pictures/music with the other users on my machine - and having each machine use the same user could bring trouble when both machines are logged in (assuming you don't have a separate server to run each box off). But just throw anything you want to share with the other mac in the /Users/Shared folder, and in it's default place make a hard link to the actual files in /Users/Shared. There are a few things you need to do - like set the group of /Users/Shared to staff (the default group of all users in os x), but it's a fairly painless process and let's both machines read/write to the same set of calendars, or music library, preferences, or mailbox.
 
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