OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies

Creating Server-Based Home Folders and Deploying Mobile Home Folders

Of course the account itself isn’t terribly useful without the user’s data. The solution is to use compatible file-sharing services on the network to create a portable home folder. To do so, you need an automountable share point configured in the directory for user home folders so that it appears to the user without intervention by the user. An automountable share point must have a network mount record in the directory domain.

Although synchronization of the user’s home folder provides hardware redundancy — the user’s account is easily synchronized with another system if a hard drive fails or another problem develops — synchronization isn’t a replacement for a good backup strategy. Changes in files on the local system — for example, files that are modified, deleted, or corrupted on the local system — are synchronized to the server’s volume. Similarly, if a problem exists on the server, the file changes get synchronized back to the local hard drive.

The next section describes creating a home folder that is located on the network. After that, I describe configuring the mobile home folder.

Creating server-based home folders

Any Open Directory user can have a home folder on the server. On a Mac, the home folder is the directory that’s named after the user. This folder contains all of the user’s data, settings, bookmarks, ...