Missing Link

I’ve not had much time to post on the conclusion to my project I undertook last night.    The short synopsis is that it was a success.    The long synopsis is… well, the rest of this post.

Really the rest of it was pretty easy.   After Leopard finished installing I created an account and did all the normal things you would need to do.   Once I was logged in I went to the Directory Utility to bind to my Open Directory server.  It’s really easy to do that,   just open directory utility (it’s in the utilities folder in your applications directory), and click the + at the bottom left of the screen.    It defaults to open directory so all you should need to do is put the server info here, either as a fqdn or ip address.   Once you’ve filled that out and submitted it,  your machine will try connecting to the server and checking that it’s all OK.  This is pretty fast,   and when done should display the server in the server list and say that it’s communicating properly.   Once you’ve completed that you can move on to the next step – logging in and setting up the mobile home directory.

It’s pretty easy – and most of it takes place on the server itself.   In workgroup manager.   Select the user you want to set this up for (there may be a way to do this globally, but I didn’t bother trying to figure out how),  then select preferences.   The one you are looking for is Mobility,   and you can set it up to your liking, but you want to create a mobile account and allow for mobile home directories.

Once all that was all set up (actually I already had that set up before i started the project)  all I needed to do was log in on the MBP.   When I logged in it asked me if I wanted to create a mobile account on the machine, with the mobile home directory.  I said yes, and it immediately started syncing the home directory on the macbook with the one I had created on the server.   I left it to do that, knowing it would be at least an hour before it was finished (as a note, you should be connected to ethernet when doing this, preferably on gigabit if you can manage that – there is a LOT of data to move here).   About an hour later the sync had finished and I was logged in.  Everything seemed to be working just fine.   I fired up iTunes to be sure my music library made the transition and was pleasantly surprised to find that it had.   I did have to authorize it to play purchased music on the computer (due to the reinstall of leopard), but that was expected.

I downloaded the apps I use regularly (adium,  visualhub, twitterific, etc) and was happy to note that once installed they picked up their preferences and settings as they had been before – that much less I had to do since I didn’t need to set up my apps how I like them.

I’ve not yet tried iPhoto,    I’m waiting on my iLife ‘08 install media to arrive ( should be here tomorrow morning) so I can install it.     I’m confident, though, that it made it alright.  The only real hiccup I could see happening there is permissions, but that was taken care of by Sync, which set the permissions on the server during the sync process.  Very nice.

Overall – Mission Successful.
The general rundown of the process I took is thus:

1. create account on the open directory server and set up mobility settings , etc.
2. create admin account on my macbook pro
3. log in to admin account on macbook pro,  download and install synk
4. connect to the open directory server so I can access my users home directory, log in as the user account created in step 1
5. Using Synk , and running it as root,   selected the home directory I wanted to move to the server as the source,   and selected the home directory on the server as the destination.    run synk.
6. Once Synk has finished,  do a fresh install of Leopard on the macbook pro
7. Once the install is finished, bind to the open directory server.
8. Log into the macbook pro as the user created in step 1, and when prompted select to create the mobile account.
9. profit!

The process, while a little nerve wracking,  was actually pretty easy to do.    I owe my friend a big thanks for his thoughts and suggestions on a method to try,    it worked out well!

As always,  if you try this on your own don’t hold me responsible if things don’t work for you – be sure you have a backup (preferably a FULL backup) of your mac before you try this, if something fails you’re going to wish you had it.   I will try to provide hints or suggestions if you find yourself stuck, but don’t expect miracles

Enjoy

[tags] Apple, Open Directory,  OS X Leopard Server,  OS X Server, Leopard Server, Portable Home Directory, Mobile Home Directory [ /tags]