How do I set up Home Directories?

[Zealing]

How do I set up Home directories under Novell? Is it just a matter of typing in a volume and path under the Home Directory section of the Environment Tab? I have tried setting this up in a similiar way to the existing accounts with H drives but can't get them to appear when the users log in. Is there any step by step guides for setting this up from Novell (I couldn't find any?). We are running NDS 4.11, thanks.

[MacGyver]

The first thing you have to do login is as supervisor, and create a directory on your network somewhere (I'll say VOL1) to keep the user directories. For example:

\\servername\vol1\users\

(This keeps the path name as short as possible and will reduce typing for your users if they use UNC paths)

Then you will have to manually create a directory for each user. To keep it simple, make it the same as their login name. I'm not aware of a way to do this automatically.

Next, go into Netware Administrator and assign the home directory in each user object. As far as I can tell, this variable is used only for the initial directory when a user FTP's into the server. I think you can leave this step out if your users do not have individual FTP access to the server.

Now the important stuff. In Netware Administrator, look for the volume object where you created the USERS directory, and double click on it. Find the first user directory, right click on it and select details. This is where you'll assign rights for each user (in the "Trustees of this directory" tab) to access their respective directory. You'll want to assign each user all rights to their home directory except for Supervisor and Access Control. Again, this looks to be a long process as I'm not aware of an easy way to do this. TIP: If you are concerned about disk space, you can set a limit for the amount of data that the user can store in their home directory. (Do this in the "Facts" tab) This is very important since a home directory with no space limit could be abused, filling the volume and causing the server to crash. This is especially critical if you store your user home directories on SYS, since a full SYS volume means your server will not start! highly recommended that you put limits in place.

Now to make the home directory work, you have to add it to the login script. You can change the login script in Netware Administrator by right clicking on the root tree object and selecting details. Look for the "Login Script" tab. Here's what you'll need to put in the login script:

If the login names have spaces in them:
MAP ROOT H:=servername/VOL1:USERS\%CN

If the login names do not have spaces in them:
MAP ROOT H:=servername/VOL1:USERS\%LOGIN_NAME

To avoid this huge mess in the future, create a new user template object in Netware Administrator and define where the home directory is to be created - the next time you create a user, use this template and it will automatically create the home directory and assign the proper rights to it when you create a new user. However this will not set up any space limits, you still have to do that manually.

If you have any more questions, please post here

[Zealing]

Cheers for the quick reply Mac, but I'm still having problems. Im having problems with the "important stuff". I browse to the volume with the directories I have created, this is called Pernw6_Sys. The actual path for all the home directories is \\Pernw6\Sys\Data\Users\. After going into the "trustees of this directory" tab, I can't see where I am supposed to assign rights to individual folders. I can add trustees for the root directory but not the actual Home directory (I have assigned rights for this by right clicking the users home folder I created earlier and selecting trustees and adding them in with full rights. Im not going to worry about setting space limits as the server has got over 9GB free and I aren't expecting users to use any more than 100MB or so each. Based on the info above I added the following line to the login script:

Map Root H:=Pernw6/Sys/Data:Users\%Login_Name

Though for some reason it didn't even run at login. There are some other users already set up with H drives that the Novell Administrator configured for them when he was here, and none of these existing accounts have anything in the login script tab. Any ideas what might the problem Mac? Thanks again for your help.

[MacGyver]

[quote]Originally posted by Zealing:
<strong>Cheers for the quick reply Mac, but I'm still having problems. Im having problems with the "important stuff". I browse to the volume with the directories I have created, this is called Pernw6_Sys. The actual path for all the home directories is \\Pernw6\Sys\Data\Users\. After going into the "trustees of this directory" tab, I can't see where I am supposed to assign rights to individual folders. I can add trustees for the root directory but not the actual Home directory (I have assigned rights for this by right clicking the users home folder I created earlier and selecting trustees and adding them in with full rights.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Make sure you right click on the actual directory that you want to assign to the user. Then in the "Trustees of this directory" tab, press the "Add Trustee button" then select the user from the list. Then set the rights for that user below (everything except for Access Control and Supervisor)

[quote]<strong>
Im not going to worry about setting space limits as the server has got over 9GB free and I aren't expecting users to use any more than 100MB or so each. </strong><hr></blockquote>

I didn't expect anybody to do that on my server, either!

[quote]<strong>
Based on the info above I added the following line to the login script:

Map Root H:=Pernw6/Sys/Data:Users\%Login_Name

Though for some reason it didn't even run at login. There are some other users already set up with H drives that the Novell Administrator configured for them when he was here, and none of these existing accounts have anything in the login script tab. Any ideas what might the problem Mac? Thanks again for your help.</strong><hr></blockquote>

The reason the existing accounts don't have anything in the login script is because that is used for individual users which override the container login script. Are you editing the CONTAINER login script? The container login script can be accessed by right clicking on the object under which the user objects are stored.

[El Oso]

One other thing you may want to check is if the workstation that is logging in has the H: Mapped through windows. This may be why it's on in the login script also.

[RIOT]

I thought when you created the user's account there was a box to check to automatically create a home directory. Of course, this doesn't help if the user account is already made.

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