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Re: NetInfo


On Mar 14, 2006, at 6:00 AM, Graham J Lee wrote:

For instance, looking at my own user record with dscl, there are four properties specifying my home directory and two specifying my user shell. 

Actually there are 2 for home and one for shell. WGM / dscl etc don't speak LDAP.. they talk to DirectoryService (the primary daemon behing Open Directory). You're seeing the DirectoryService (Open Directory, Standard, the terminology is messy) name in addition to the LDAP (aka native) name.

NFSHomeDirectory and homeDirectory are the same thing (a unix file system path). The former is Open Directory's name, the latter LDAP.

NetInfo is represented in the same way. NFSHomeDirectory there is home.. HomeDirectory (which is apple-homeurl in LDAP) is home_loc in NetInfo*. This abstraction allows Mac OS X to interoperate with a wide set of directory services.. like Active Directory or SunOne. This is arguably the most important feature of Mac OS X to IT-centric markets.

Despite the cross-platform nature of LDAP it's actually quite hard to get a bunch of different systems talking, because as soon as any client wants to write back you have to guess not only which attributes you need to change but which ones everyone else expects you to change for them.

That's the whole point of Open Directory.

My panther book has an appendix that goes into this all in great depth. Apple Eu also has me over to the UK pretty frequently to speak on the subject. Contact email@hidden if you are a major accounts customer (Oxford is) and wish to attend.


*HomeDirectory / apple-homeurl / home_loc is an xml string that tells the Mac OS X login proccess how to build the FS path represented in NFSHomeDirectory / homeDirectory / home.

__
Michael Bartosh
Essential Mac OS X Server Administration, O'Reilly
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References: 
 >NetInfo (From: Wes Groleau <email@hidden>)
 >Re: NetInfo (From: Graham J Lee <email@hidden>)
 >Re: NetInfo (From: Wes Groleau <email@hidden>)
 >Re: NetInfo (From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: NetInfo (From: "Ronald C.F. Antony" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: NetInfo (From: Graham J Lee <email@hidden>)



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