AD Home directory mounting at login?

[wstewart3]

I have several users who do not want this option. We are using the AD functionality in JSS to bind the machines to the domain which creates mobile accounts.

I have unchecked the "Use UNC path from Active Directory to derive network home location"

But "Force local home directory on startup disk" is greyed out and selected. I am not sure if this is what is mounting that when they first log in and getting a "directory.org cannot be mounted" error.

Any ideas?

[cbd4s]

Hi, @wstewart3 , did you ever find out if it's possible to uncheck "Force local home directory on startup disk"? Thanks.

[cbd4s · Accepted solution]

I've figured out Force local home directory on startup disk is automatically enabled and enforced when create mobile account at login is selected for AD join with mobile account.

It looks to me that if AD user account profile has Home folder set to a UNC path, it will be automatically mapped at the user login, in which case if the Mac is not on the corporate network, the user will get the error message "There was a problem connecting to the server ...".

Tested this workaround and it appears to be working:
Login as the AD user mobile account enabled
Open and unlock Directory Utility
View User in node /Local/Default
Search the user's name
on the right hand side, find OriginalHomeDirectory
change its value to <home_dir><path>/Users/username/</path></home_dir>
After this, when the Mac is offline, logging in as the user doesn't have the drive mapping error anymore and the home folder/drive can still be connected to manually.

[wstewart3]

I think this worked.  However I took it a bit further to make it scriptable.  I think you can completely just delete the key...

sudo dscl "/Local/Default" -delete /Users/$USER OriginalHomeDirectory

Of course if you are scripting through JSS script I think you can use $3, or you would need to grab the active user and resplace $USER.  I think $USER will just be root or something else if JSS is running it.

[endor-moon]

We bailed on home directory mounting because no one seems to be supporting it anymore and there were lots of issues with various software packages trying to save hundreds of small preference files on the remote homedir. When it works, it is simply wonderful, as our student's data follows them around like a puppy. However, the downsides started to outweigh the upsides. Please let us know how it is working out for you.