HELIOS Tech Info #137

Network home directories for Mac clients

The configuration of a network based home directory for Mac OS X clients can be tricky. We made a configuration example available at “Using AFP network home directories for LDAP users” which describes the configuration of a HELIOS server to share home directories.

The example uses an LDAP (Open Directory) database on a Mac OS X Server for sharing user credentials and login information. It contains all steps that are required to implement the network home directory for a Mac OS X client.

Note:
The same setup works in a similar way for SMB based network home directories. However, we do not recommend using SMB because it lacks important features used by a Mac client (e.g. the FPExchangeFiles call), which may lead to trouble for some applications.