10.9 Admin users don't have any folders

[mwilkerson]

Hi JN,

Haven't seen this anywhere and it's been a bit perplexing. Not sure this is directly related to Casper, either, but if anyone has any ideas, I'm open.

We have a DeployStudio workflow for 10.9, which images a machine then runs a package to create our Admin user (created from CreateUserPkg.app) after reboot. This works flawlessly in 10.7 and 10.8, but with 10.9, the new Admin user has only the Desktop and Downloads folders in the home folder when it finally completes. The Library folder is also there, but not visible of course.

This is causing some issues when our Casper Imaging begins and tries to install some things that require the other directories.

I have not been able to find any log information that would explain this change in behavior. The CreateUserPkg page on GitHub doesn't indicate any known issues with Mavericks (although it also doesn't explicitly state that it is compatible, either).

Anyone had similar experiences?

UPDATE: Turns out this was a problematic package that installed along with our deployment of the OS. Really strange behavior, though. Never would have guessed it.

[dpertschi]

Similar experience, yes. Resolution, not really.

InstaDMG base OS and an admin account created with CreateUserPkg.app

I had a 10.7.5 config working fine for months, and suddenly logging in as the admin user would yield odd home folder things like you mention; not all the folders were there, couldn't save to desktop or do anything that would write a preference. Log in as a domain user and all was normal.

Something was trampling on ownership/permissions, most of the time if I reset ownership on admins home with chown, it would correct.

For now, I'm using the management account as the local admin account. <shrug>

[bfrench]

I have just encountered a similar situation with imaging. Admin user has no movies, music, pictures or public folders. What application did you find was causing the problem?

[JesseNCSD]

I'm also having this same problem.
My admin-level user is using UID 501.
I had been running the user pkg directly after an AutoDMG-based OS install, but moved it around to various spots in the imaging installation process. No changes in order make a difference.
I don't see anything set strangely permissions-wise, and creating a standard or admin user via System Prefs after imaging doesn't result in odd permissions or incomplete homes on additional users.

I'm in the process of diagnosing in more depth - trying to slowly add packages to see when the issue is introduced. Most of my workflow is straight vendor .pkgs - very little captured stuff.

Sadface!

[activitymonitor]

I have seen this before. In my case it was related to installing a package with Fill Existing Users selected before all accounts had been logged into.

If an app or script creates /Users/admin/Library/Preferences/cool.app.plist before the account has been used, OS X will NOT copy the default profile to /Users/admin at first login as the directory will already exist.

I would like to think this qualifies as a bug with the FUT feature. If ~/ does not exist, Casper should not partially create it.