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Home directories

Hello gang.

I have a few questions regarding home directories. Stanford currently gives each user a 100MB AFS mounted network space. Our LDAP servers are set up such that when a user logs into a lab Mac, this space is used as the home directory. We've encountered a few problems in this setup.

For example, if a user is close to full on their disk quota, login hangs, or if it completes, the user experiences random application crashes. Also, ~/Library/Preferences randomly gets corrupted for some users, showing up as a file instead of a directory and causing much consternation. Finally, we're on 10.2.8 right now, but in our development of a Panther image for the fall, we've discovered that opening a file in AFS space, modifying it, and trying to save it results in a kernel panic on occasion: invariably when using SubEthaEdit, randomly when using Microsoft Word. (Our AFS folks tell me that this is due to some weird interaction between the Panther Finder and OpenAFS, but that isn't too helpful when it comes to resolving the issue.)

All this is causing us to rethink our current model. We're considering creating local home directories on the fly and erasing them on logout. This raises some questions for us:

1. Since applications by default save documents in the home directory, users could potentially work on a paper for hours, think it's saved, log out....and lose the document.

2. The current setup allows users to set their own desktop background, download applications and run them from their home directories, preserve application preferences/fonts, etc. All this would go away.

My questions: how do folks that create local home directories on the fly handle these issues? Have there been other problems with this setup for which I should be on the lookout?

I'd also like to hear from folks who are using network home dirs. Right now the only other place I know that does the same thing as Stanford is Notre Dame, and I'm trying to get in touch with the folks there. But if you are using network home dirs, I'd be grateful to hear about your experiences.

If you'd like to e-mail me directly, I will summarize and post to the list.

Thanks,
-s
--

"Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eggs."

Surajit A. Bose
Cluster Operations Manager
Stanford University
650.725.2939
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