Alright so, I am sure the answer to my question exists but I have no idea what i am looking for as far as syntax is concerned. I have taken over as tech at a full mac School and have not touched a mac before in my life. I will try my best to give a detailed description without an entire life story.
My school has 10.4 on laptops which we run a script on to bind to a directory allowing them to access accounts created on our server. That part works fine. The problem we are having is syncing or saving any files/changes to these networked accounts. The accounts seem to have home directories created, i went through workgroup manager and set up login/out and background syncs, and nothing seems to work(Copy/save). This year it would have been nice to have the syncing feature since all student/teacher laptops would go back and forth from home and work. However next year will change a bit since we will keep all student laptops here and the teachers will still take them home. We also have desktops of course which do not move and will be accessed by the students.
I need to find a way for students to log into the server to access their account and have it automatically pop up displaying their own files/folder on any machine they access since they wont always be at the same machine. considering there will be upwards of 100 students accessing each machine, local syncing for this would not be a good idea. My best guess would be setting up network home directories so they can log into and work directly from the server and have nothing but the original OS installed on their local machine.
As far as the teachers go, Since they have one laptop the entire year and take them home the syncing method would be the best. That way they can come here, turn on their laptop, automatically sync as they log in, and save everything when they log out (or every so many minutes since some of them close it and just run home). I tried doing this with a student account but could not get it to work. My other problem with this is that the teacher laptops are 10.5 and I have no clue how to bind them to the directory since I was not the one who created the original script which is something i would like to reverse engineer to my standards since it has some nice little things in it I just wish to tweak.
A short recap of what i need:
1) Network based accounts with network home directories, nothing locally saved
2) Network Based accounts with Portable Home Directories, Syncing between local and server files
3) Bind 10.5 machines to server
4) Program to read and edit a script.
I somewhat know the terminology for PHDs and MHDs and have read a bit about those but still cannot get them to work, but I am extremely frustrated with my lack of terminology for NHDs (If that is what they would even be called) and have had a hard time finding any information on how to set them up. The only thing i found was stating that if the server goes down, so do the accounts. Which isnt a problem since we have multiple servers as well as last ditch local accounts for students to just access the computers.
As far as i know, our servers are running LDAPv3 w/ OD, maybe even not with OD, I really don't know. If anyone can give me any help with this it would be much appreciated. If you need any additional information let me know and I will try my best to get it to you. I may even be willing to wipe everything and start fresh if it is required since these havent been used much in over 2 years, only for drive mounting storage.
My school has 10.4 on laptops which we run a script on to bind to a directory allowing them to access accounts created on our server. That part works fine. The problem we are having is syncing or saving any files/changes to these networked accounts. The accounts seem to have home directories created, i went through workgroup manager and set up login/out and background syncs, and nothing seems to work(Copy/save). This year it would have been nice to have the syncing feature since all student/teacher laptops would go back and forth from home and work. However next year will change a bit since we will keep all student laptops here and the teachers will still take them home. We also have desktops of course which do not move and will be accessed by the students.
I need to find a way for students to log into the server to access their account and have it automatically pop up displaying their own files/folder on any machine they access since they wont always be at the same machine. considering there will be upwards of 100 students accessing each machine, local syncing for this would not be a good idea. My best guess would be setting up network home directories so they can log into and work directly from the server and have nothing but the original OS installed on their local machine.
As far as the teachers go, Since they have one laptop the entire year and take them home the syncing method would be the best. That way they can come here, turn on their laptop, automatically sync as they log in, and save everything when they log out (or every so many minutes since some of them close it and just run home). I tried doing this with a student account but could not get it to work. My other problem with this is that the teacher laptops are 10.5 and I have no clue how to bind them to the directory since I was not the one who created the original script which is something i would like to reverse engineer to my standards since it has some nice little things in it I just wish to tweak.
A short recap of what i need:
1) Network based accounts with network home directories, nothing locally saved
2) Network Based accounts with Portable Home Directories, Syncing between local and server files
3) Bind 10.5 machines to server
4) Program to read and edit a script.
I somewhat know the terminology for PHDs and MHDs and have read a bit about those but still cannot get them to work, but I am extremely frustrated with my lack of terminology for NHDs (If that is what they would even be called) and have had a hard time finding any information on how to set them up. The only thing i found was stating that if the server goes down, so do the accounts. Which isnt a problem since we have multiple servers as well as last ditch local accounts for students to just access the computers.
As far as i know, our servers are running LDAPv3 w/ OD, maybe even not with OD, I really don't know. If anyone can give me any help with this it would be much appreciated. If you need any additional information let me know and I will try my best to get it to you. I may even be willing to wipe everything and start fresh if it is required since these havent been used much in over 2 years, only for drive mounting storage.