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8 Managing Portable Computers
This chapter provides information about tools available to
manage portable computers.
Mac OS X Server allows you to create and manage mobile accounts for users of
portable computers.
About Mobile Accounts
If your organization uses portable computers, assign mobile accounts to users. This
allows you to manage their preferences and control their level of access to local and
network resources. These mobile accounts, which are designed for portable computers,
provide many advantages over local or network accounts.
A mobile account includes both a network home folder and a local home folder.
Having these two types of home folders allows users to take advantage of features
available for both local and network accounts. You can sync specific folders in these
two home folders, creating a portable home directory.
Syncing ensures that users access their most recently updated files when they connect
to the network. If a user modifies files on different computers, when he or she connects
to the network and syncs, his or her computer retrieves the most recently synced file.
Mobile accounts also cache authentication information and managed preferences.
A user’s authentication information is maintained on the directory server but is cached
on the local computer. With cached authentication information, a user can log in using
the same user name and password, even if he or she is not connected to the network.
For example, if a student has a mobile account, the student’s login name, password,
and preferences defined for the user account, workgroups, and computer are the same
at school and at home. If you change these items, the local versions are updated when
the user logs in at school.