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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">I guess I would rather do it in DS than by a sym link just because. Sym link goes bad lots of problems I think could happen. Users could jack it up them self as well since they own everything. Especially with NetInfo. I saw so many weird quirks with it when we ran Tiger, and a lot of times it would dupe local or mobile accounts to the machine and I would have to go in and delete one of them to make the account work again. I guess I am just a bit paranoid, and I don't like touching anything in production. I would have to fully test the sym link thing heavily before I did it in my live environment. It is good to know it works for you, maybe some day I will try it. </font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">Also, with laptops I don't think diskutility supports live resizing in Tiger, so you would have to be a bit more creative because you couldn't have a second volume nor could you script something to create a new volume on the existing drive in Tiger. I think that is one of the 300 new features of Leopard if I recall, to resize live partitions and create a /users partition to house the directory.</font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">Plus with all the hard drive failures I see anyway every day on the Macbooks, I would really suggest using mobile home directories. Then you can just wipe and resync the home directory and call it a day. The down side to that is that a home sync is not a true back up, it is a synchronization, which some users just can't quite grasp.</font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">When you toss these in your production machines, are these servers or are these like actual user machines? I think working in education has made me paranoid since students like to tinker, hack, exploit, and crash machines whenever they can.</font><br><br><br>___________________________<BR>Thomas Larkin<BR>TIS Department<BR>KCKPS USD500<BR><a href="mailto:tlarki@kckps.org">tlarki@kckps.org</a><BR>blackberry: 913-449-7589<BR>office: 913-627-0351<BR><BR><BR><BR><br><br>>>> "Miles Leacy" <miles.leacy@themacadmin.com> 01/06/09 9:52 AM >>><br>I've been doing this in production environments (large enterprises as well as my family's Macs) for at least two years on both Tiger and Leopard without any issues.  What are the potential issues you're concerned about? </p>
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The reason for including the permissions repair is lost to antiquity and poor documentation I'm afraid, but I seem to vaguely recall it having something to do with the /Users/Shared folder.  Since it works, I'm not overly concerned with uncovering the answer, but if you care to, you could comment out the permissions repair line and see what the difference is.<br> </p>
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Whether netinfo or ds is handling your home folders, it refers to them as a filesystem path.  As far as my knowledge and experience goes, there is no difference in how home folders function between a system with a genuine /Users path and one with a symlinked /Users path. </p>
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----------<br>Miles A. Leacy IV<br><br> Certified System Administrator 10.4<br> Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5<br> Certified Trainer<br>Certified Casper Administrator<br>----------<br>voice: 1-347-277-7321<br><a href="mailto:miles.leacy@themacadmin.com">miles.leacy@themacadmin.com</a><br><a href="http://www.themacadmin.com">www.themacadmin.com</a><br><br><br><br><br> </p>
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On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Thomas Larkin </p>
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<<a href="mailto:tlarki@kckps.org">tlarki@kckps.org</a>> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">I don't know if I think that is a totally wise idea.  I have read on several occasions either at AFP548.com or <a target="_blank" href="http://macenterprise.org">macenterprise.org</a> about moving home directories and then connecting them by symbolic link.  While I can't exactly recall the specifics other than it has to do with NetInfo and the location of the home directory or with Open Directory (dscl in 10.5) and how the user database actually points to the home folder.  Also, if I recall diskutility will not repair permissions on user data, it only does it on system data.  I am not saying it won't work, I am just saying there may be some issues as I have read from other people posting and how NetInfo and Open Directory handle the user database.  Please correct me if I am wrong on that, because I have never tried to make a user partition on a local machine just for home directories, well at least not in OS X.  In Linux I have.</font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">If you don't have network homes, or portable home directories I really strongly suggest you look into something like that.  I know that 10gigs of data for each user can eat up storage pretty quick, but storage is actually well, kind of cheap these days.  </font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">Over the summer we reimaged 6,000 Macbooks from 10.4 to 10.5.  10.5.4 was a damn nightmare but 10.5.5 smoothed most of those things out.  I wiped out all of our servers, reloaded them, and since I house home directories on separate volumes on the network I just pointed in WGM the volume for home directories.  I also recommend a full wipe and fresh import of LDAP.  I just exported mine to plain text (users and groups) and then reimported them via WGM.  This will not preserve passwords, so I did a master password reset.  I have tools now to set unique passwords for users as well, and will be implementing that over next summer.  Next summer I am wiping out everything and freshly loading every thing.</font><br><br><br>___________________________<br>Thomas Larkin<br>TIS Department<br>KCKPS USD500<br><a target="_blank" href="mailto:tlarki@kckps.org">tlarki@kckps.org</a><br>blackberry:  913-449-7589<br>office:  913-627-0351<br><br><br><br><br><br>>>> "Miles Leacy" <<a target="_blank" href="mailto:miles.leacy@themacadmin.com">miles.leacy@themacadmin.com</a>> 01/06/09 8:01 AM >>> </p>
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If you don't mind doing some extra work now, you can move people's data to another partition now, and in the future, you can do as you like with the system volume going forward without worry about user data. </p>
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Note that if you boot an existing Mac (with user data) to a Leopard volume, you can create new partitions non-destructively and this task can be scripted. </p>
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I would (and do) do it like this: </p>
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# </p>
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##### HEADER BEGINS ##### </p>
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# scr_sys_symlinkUsers.sh </p>
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# </p>
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# Created 20071011 by Miles A. Leacy IV </p>
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# <a target="_blank" href="mailto:miles.leacy@themacadmin.com">miles.leacy@themacadmin.com</a> </p>
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# Modified 20090106 by Miles A. Leacy IV </p>
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# Copyright 2009 Miles A. Leacy IV </p>
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# </p>
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# This script may be copied and distributed freely as long as this header remains intact. </p>
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# </p>
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# This script is provided "as is".  The author offers no warranty or guarantee of any kind. </p>
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# Use of this script is at your own risk.  The author takes no responsibility for loss of use, </p>
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# loss of data, loss of job, loss of socks, the onset of armageddon, or any other negative effects. </p>
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# </p>
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# Test thoroughly in a lab environment before use on production systems. </p>
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# When you think it's ok, test again.  When you're certain it's ok, test twice more. </p>
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# </p>
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# This script moves /Users to /Volumes/Data.  If your data volume is named differently, </p>
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# be sure to replace each instance of "/Volumes/Data" with the path to your data volume. </p>
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# Run as an "at reboot" script when imaging with Casper. </p>
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/bin/mv /Users /Volumes/Data </p>
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rm -R /Users </p>
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/bin/ln -s /Volumes/Data /Users </p>
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----------<br>Miles A. Leacy IV<br><br> Certified System Administrator 10.4<br> Certified Technical Coordinator 10.5<br> Certified Trainer<br>Certified Casper Administrator<br>----------<br>voice: 1-347-277-7321<br><a target="_blank" href="mailto:miles.leacy@themacadmin.com">miles.leacy@themacadmin.com</a><br><a target="_blank" href="http://www.themacadmin.com">www.themacadmin.com</a><br><br><br><br><br> </p>
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On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 4:10 PM, David Lundgren </p>
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<<a target="_blank" href="mailto:david.lundgren@brooks.edu">david.lundgren@brooks.edu</a>> </p>
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I was wondering how you all have done migrations from Tiger to Leopard.<br><br>We have an Active Directory setup where the users home directories are local<br>to the machine (our faculty often have 10GB+ of data, and some have<br>laptops).<br><br>We were contemplating doing separate user and OS partitions at the same time<br>to make any future OS upgrades less painful, without having to worry about<br>user data.<br><br>Thanks,<br><br>David Lundgren<br>IT Systems Administrator<br><br>Brooks Institute - "Passion, Vision, Excellence"<br>27 East Cota Street<br>Santa Barbara, CA 93101<br>(888) 304-3456 (toll-free)<br>(805) 690-7615 (office)<br><a target="_blank" href="http://www.brooks.edu">http://www.brooks.edu</a><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Casper mailing list<br><a target="_blank" href="mailto:Casper@list.jamfsoftware.com">Casper@list.jamfsoftware.com</a><br><a target="_blank" href="http://list.jamfsoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/casper">http://list.jamfsoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/casper</a><br> </p>
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