alternative way to access network home directories

[kateswist]

For a variety of reasons (some of which I understand, but many I don't) I can not get home directory mapping to work consistently with our macs that are bound to our AD.

Is there an alternative way, either through scripting or through the JSS, to map AD user home directories WITH OUT using the AD settings in their user account?

Basic setup:
2008 AD forest
AD user accounts with both OU and User Groups configured
2003 member servers where home directories can reside OR
Mac server (not joined to AD or with OD installed) that could also house the home directories if necessary

[imperatives]

You might be able to use the mountNetworkShare.sh script to a users$ share on login: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/viewProductFile.html?id=135&fid=476

I would caution the use of OD. If I recall correctly WorkGroup Manager will not be part of 10.9 Server.

[mscottblake]

I run a script to mount the drive, but that assumes that you know the drive mapping ahead of time. I run this for our staff only. Our students could have a home directory stored in the AD, but I don't map those due to ACLs anyway.

#!/bin/sh

# Store the logged in user
user=`ls -la /dev/console | cut -d " " -f 4`

# Store the File Server
server='fileServerName.company.org'

# Path to shares
sharePath='path/to/share/container'

# Mount the user's home directory
sudo -u $user mkdir '/Volumes/Home'
sudo -u $user mount -t smbfs //$server'/'$sharePath'/'$user '/Volumes/Home'

[kateswist]

@msblake

I am very limited in my knowledge of apple scripting & management. Do you apply that as a vbs logon script to the user in AD or is that something that is run on the Mac client, or from the mac server?

Katie

[bentoms]

This is what we do, hope it helps: http://macmule.com/2011/09/08/how-to-map-drives-printers-based-on-ad-group-membership-on-osx/

[mscottblake]

My script is a shell script that is run at login on the client machine.

[clifhirtle]

We use the Casper AD bind, but given that 90% of our users are on wifi we modify the AD bind variables to not mount the user's home directories on login (dsconfigad -sharepoint disable), preferring instead to have folks manually mount via saved Connect to Server entry, alias on their desktop, or addition to Self Service to create that automated login for them on-demand.

Though the script methods mentioned above will always give you the most error detection, you could also try the basic means of adding their sharepoint to user account login items as well.