Mac and Active Directory Best Settings

[nunes013]

Hi everyone! We have some older iMacs at school we want to repurpose in our school media center as extra just internet browsing computers. They are SUPER slow logging in to our active directory and signing out. Besides that they do fine at browsing the web. Does anyone know best settings so that the Mac does not create a user account and folder for each student in hopes to speed these up? Thank you!

 

[TriBruin]

Do you have Mobile accounts turned off? If not, I would turn off Mobile Accounts.

That being said, do you need to them joined to AD? I can't in good conscious recommend joining a Mac to AD anymore.

 

[satcomer]

Just look at this video to show you:

 

[nunes013]

Thank you! We will play with turning off mobile accounts. That is kind of what we were thinking. We do not want them binded to AD so it is more a temporary solution until we figure out something long-term.

 

[hobowankenobi]

I did not watch the video, so apologies if redundant.

Consider ending Binding Macs to AD, and use NoMAD instead. It doe the work of binding, without binding. Can be greatly automated and customized too, and the optional NoMAD Login will create user accounts on demand (on the first login) with AD credentials. Very slick, easy to manage user credentials on AD.

NoMAD open-source home

 

[Altemose]

Are the Macs being managed by an MDM or Profile Manager? There are several tweaks that can be done and deployed via a settings profile to speed up login time such as:

1. Set com.apple.MCX cachedaccounts.askForSecureTokenAuthBypass string to true. This disables the Bypass Secure Token option when creating a mobile account.
2. Disable mobile account prompt (either enforce that it creates or does not without a prompt).
3. Disable using UNC path to derive network home location.
4. Disable Microsoft AutoUpdate (if installed).
5. Disable Setup Assistant options.

Bear in mind that most of these options are version dependent, so you may find that some settings are ineligible for use on older operating systems.

 

[satcomer]

You should know Microsoft in 2007 push out an update too Microsoft Sever 2008s2 to allow Mac & Linux to get into Active Directory! Sense Server 2010 both Mac and linux can join microdot server Active Directory! So if domain is. Microsoft 2010 or better with Mac or modern Linux machines to log into Active Directory!