Folders listed as Files in the User Library (User Template Issue?)

[GabeShack]

Wow, im on a posting roll today. Im seeing a few specific folders being created as files as I log into my AD accounts on my new MBAir Image. So far its affecting Calendars, ColorSync, Components, Dictionaries, KeyBindings, Keychains, Mail and QuickLook. They all show as a zero bytes file instead of a folder which is what it should be.

None of these folders are listed in the User Template and I'm starting to think maybe this is why. Maybe I'll try creating Folders with these names in the User Template (which I saw as a work around in another post).

Anyone else seen this?

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[GabeShack · Accepted solution]

Creating the folders that were showing as files with a root user in the /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/Library fixed this issue it seems.

Annoying that this has to be done though...

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[nessts]

Are you manually doing the ditto for the user home creation? I was doing that only putting stuff in Non_localized and then trying to ditto non_localized only and that was causing a problem. Once I let the system copy the user template or copied both English.lproj and the Non_localized problems stopped.

[GabeShack]

Interesting that I'm seeing this again now that I'm upgrading these to 10.11. Very strange.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[floatingorchard]

@gshackney We just encountered this same symptom/issue using Casper Imaging in Target Mode. Our primary concern is the non-fucntional User Keychain, however all those zero-byte files point to a broader problem. In our testing we found that unchecking "Fill User Templates" (FUT) on all the DMG packages in the workflow made the symptom disappear, however none of those DMG packages contain any of those corrupt paths.

[Chris_Hafner]

@floatingorchard @gshackney Interesting. I've just verified that at least ONE .dmg I've created with using an FET policy, causes this issue for me during NetBoot imaging. Perhaps there is some package somewhere with a FUT that causes issues but I have several of those still working. I suspect that there's an old permissions issue being introduced. I'm going to work on this, today and tomorrow and report back with anything that I notice.

[Chris_Hafner]

Following this up I found that recreating the .dmg with a new version of composer seems to have solve the issue for me. I used 9.82 this time around (The older one may have bene created prior to 9 rolling out) utilizing both the FET and FEU check boxes and things are imaging/installing just fine now. New users created afterwords are A-OK. Nothing funny in their libraries. That said, I've not yet tested on 10.11. This was all on 10.10.5 without doing anything to the User Template, other than what Casper does itself.

[freezig]

I have this same issue in my environment and it appears to be related to Apple Apps (iLife apps purchased with institutional Apple ID and packaged up with no user files). Adding even one app with a base AutoDMG created image and no directory bindings reproduces the issues for us. None of our Apps FUT/FEU. I run a script to create the directories but have not troubleshot this beyond narrowing it down.

[Chris_Hafner]

That's an interesting one. For me it was non-apple software. Actually, I've got Apple software going out properly, including the Garageband loops, which are certainly filling out the User Template.

[FutureFacinLuke]

Hi,

The fix I had for this in Mojave was a DMG with empty folders deployed using FUT and FEU, this doesn't work on Catalina.

The root cause was my GarageBand Post Install (which was using FUT and FEU) so I will be rebuilding the GarageBand post install again this year.