Filter
Top Products
138 Chapter 8 Managing Portable Computers
Consider the following:
 Improperly set sync settings can cause long delays during login and logout and can
create inconsistent home folders.
 If multiple users create a mobile account on the same computer, it could cause
excessive proliferation of home folders.
 Mobile accounts can’t restore deleted files through syncing.
 You can’t create mobile accounts when connected to a network through a virtual
private network (VPN) connection.
Improperly set sync settings can cause long delays during login and logout and can
create inconsistent home folders
If you only sync large files at login and logout, this could significantly increase the
amount of time it takes for users to log in and out. If users make changes to large files,
they must wait for the files to sync before they can finish logging in or logging out.
If a number of users are making changes to large files and are simultaneously logging
in to a wireless network with limited bandwidth, they can overload the network,
further delaying their login.
If you do not sync key folders, this can create inconsistent home folders and confuse
your users.
For example, as a school administrator, let’s say you decide to only sync a student’s ~/
Documents folder. This means that if students don’t save their homework in the ~/
Documents folder, their homework isn’t synced. When the students log in on another
computer, they can’t access their homework. Also, if homework saved in
~/Documents references pictures in ~/Pictures, the references might not work because
the ~/Pictures folder is not synced.
If multiple users create a mobile account on the same computer, it could cause
excessive proliferation of home folders
If you have a shared-access computer like a kiosk or lab computer, every time a user
creates his or her mobile account, a local home folder is created. If unmanaged, this
could completely fill the computer’s available hard disk space.
If you set account expiry settings for a mobile account, you can automatically delete
the local home folder after a set period of inactivity. If you don’t want to automatically
delete the home folder, consider using network or generic local accounts, both of
which prevent the user from creating local home folders.
If you set up a guest account, the contents of its local home folder are deleted when
the user logs out.