Mobil Home Directories + Logging into the Server

pedz

pedz

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I am worried that I may not be able to do what I want to do...

I use my server as my work station at home; so I want to be able to log into it as a normal user.

I set up my "normal user" as a mobil user so the home directory gets synced with my laptop. That part of it seems to be working fine. I can log in to the laptop or the G4 and the mobil user works as advertised. The G4 and the laptop are in a Computer List and the preferences for those computers are managed.

I added the server into the same list and it did not seem to like that so I took it back out. But, so far, no matter what I do, when I log in to the server as my mobil user, AppleFileServer soon starts soaking up 99% of the cpu time.

Is this type of set up "doable"?

Thanks,
Perry
 
So, that's a good question. I don't really know of anyone using PHDs to login to an OS X Server installation. Usually, most folks use designated NetInfo or LDAP accounts specifically for administrative purposes.

The issue here is probably the default handling of AFP and local machines. If you were, for example, to try and connect to an AFP share on a local machine, it would error, telling you to access the data locally instead of via the AFP mechanism, which makes sense. What's happening to you is the LDAP records are supplying the locally cached NetInfo account (used for the PHD) an AFP mount, which is local to itself. The conflict is probably stalling out the AFP server and locks up.

Its a good question though. I just received an Xserve RAID that I'm going to split between my Quad and OS X Server and migrate all of the accounts that I have to PHDs, but I usually don't use a standard account when accessing the server, for security and ease of use. :)
 
Go3iverson said:
The issue here is probably the default handling of AFP and local machines. If you were, for example, to try and connect to an AFP share on a local machine, it would error, telling you to access the data locally instead of via the AFP mechanism, which makes sense. What's happening to you is the LDAP records are supplying the locally cached NetInfo account (used for the PHD) an AFP mount, which is local to itself. The conflict is probably stalling out the AFP server and locks up.
Click to expand...

Michael's got a good point, but there's a real easy way to find out what's happening during the stall. SSH into the server, then run:

>$ sudo fs_usage > blah.txt

after a while, quit, shop the ssh session and examine the contents of the file. That should reveal the source of contention.

However, if you wanted to, you **could** try your home dir on an NFS export rather than an AFP Network Mount. You might be pleasantly surprised!
 
I reinstalled the machine last night and I have not put my server into the group of machines. So far, its working fine. I can log into the server as the user and it puts me into the home directory that gets copied.

The reason I added the server into the list of computers is because I wanted to pull the updates from the server itself -- not over the net (from Apple). Maybe there is a different way to do that particular thing.
 
If you want to use software update server, why not just apply the MCX at the user level, instead of at the machine level?
 
I *think* maybe I did that with the previous install but I have not tried it with this install. I switched to the local netinfo database in Workgroup Manager, and set my admin's Software Update Preferences to point to my server. That seemed to work. But what worried me is when I logged in I got this question that I did not understand -- I can't remember exactly how it was phrased.

I picked the default (the top check box was checked) and that seemed to work for the update. After the update, I logged out, logged back in, and did not check it -- since I didn't really know what it was doing.
 
So, out of curiosity, just by the nature and amount of questions you've had, what are you using this server for? :)

I'm always happy to help out, but there seem to be so many questions all over the map, maybe having a better understanding of what your trying to do could help us help you overall. :)
 
Actually, as a server, I'm doing very little.

I'm a one man "shop". I have a new Quad G5. The old G4 will be given to my son but I'm still using it. I have an Apple laptop and an RS/6000 that I'm using for software development. I'm a programmer by trade.

The "server" serves a few web sites that are very low volume -- they are not even up yet on the new server. On the old server I had switched everything to Apache 2.2, the latest PHP, and the latest PostgreSQL.

It is my mail server.

And I have about 2.75T of storage for my photography.

Mostly I want to use the G5 for Photoshop work. That is why I want to log into the server as a normal user. (And its why I have so much disk space).

There are various neat things I'd like to take advantage of if possible. Like having the server pull over the updates at its leisure and then apply them to the laptop and server. I'd like to have PHD working so I can work on the server, log out, log into the laptop, and mostly pick up where I've left off.

Also, just to complete the picture, I'm out in country so the only high speed internet I can get is a T1.

I guess what may be confusing is I'm a programmer and I want things terse and I want to know what is happening. I guess terse and precise. The Apple documentation does not give me either. It just has, what seems to me, to be very vague clues as to why to pick a particular thing or not.
 
Look for the books by Schoun Regan from PeachPit Press. They'd give you some good foundations to start with to being your server and such. :)
 
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