Syncing Home Folder across multiple Macs...?

[USA1776]

How's everyone doing?

Been a Mac user for a long time now and a regular user of .Mac syncronisation capabilities. However, as I've got a small network of Macs at home, I've always wanted to be able to schedule a frequent sync of my Home folder across them all (so I have the same up-to-date content on each Mac).

They're all Airport enabled and I've looked at iSync & Automater and can't seem to find any answers... Any ideas?

 

[orkle]

I've been using ChronoSync for a few months now and it seems great!

http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/ChronoSync/chrono_overview.html

 

[swiftaw]

I too use Chronosync, works great.

 

[aswitcher]

I expect to see this in Leopard.

Plus I would hope to see mirroring to external drives for live backingu p/pseudo raid system.

 

[projectle]

It is a standard function if you have a Mac OS X server or a Linux server avaliable that is configured to act as a Workgroup Server (the equivilant of a Windows Domain Controller).

If you do not wish to spare a box to run Server, then you could always use something like rsync (included by default in OS X) or you can use ChronoSync.

With a server option, absolutely everything related to your user account is shared between all of the computers when you log in down to your screen saver, desktop, documents, spotlight privacy settings, etc.

What I have is an old 400 MHz PC with 256MB of memory and an old 80GB hard disk that I have set up with linux to act as a login server for all of the computers in my household including Windows, Linux and OS X, all of which have access to all user data on login (UI and OS specific settings are all OS restrictive though. I have not written a conversion filter yet to edit the background settings and other User specific settings to apply across all operating systems).

 

[twoodcc]

It is a standard function if you have a Mac OS X server or a Linux server avaliable that is configured to act as a Workgroup Server (the equivilant of a Windows Domain Controller).

If you do not wish to spare a box to run Server, then you could always use something like rsync (included by default in OS X) or you can use ChronoSync.

With a server option, absolutely everything related to your user account is shared between all of the computers when you log in down to your screen saver, desktop, documents, spotlight privacy settings, etc.

What I have is an old 400 MHz PC with 256MB of memory and an old 80GB hard disk that I have set up with linux to act as a login server for all of the computers in my household including Windows, Linux and OS X, all of which have access to all user data on login (UI and OS specific settings are all OS restrictive though. I have not written a conversion filter yet to edit the background settings and other User specific settings to apply across all operating systems).

wow, this is what i want to do. you need to teach us how to do this

 

[projectle]

Sure.

Give me a few days to write up a guide and I will post it up here.

Here is a very general description from memory.

Overall, it was not that difficult after seeing how OS X Server was handling its workgroup accounts system. And given how simmilar OS X and Linux are (from a purely technical perspective), I set out to figure out how to adapt the configuration of the default Workgroup Server in SuSE Linux 10.0 (at the time, now upgraded to 10.1) to work with OS X user accounts.

All that was needed was to create an additional login script that would sit in the user's home directory that would be shared by all of the operating systems as was normally done for the Workgroup Server for Windows and Linux.

After I figured out the login script, I just needed to join all of the systems to the server as a Windows Domain Controller through Active Directory.

 

[twoodcc]

Sure.

Give me a few days to write up a guide and I will post it up here.

Here is a very general description from memory.

Overall, it was not that difficult after seeing how OS X Server was handling its workgroup accounts system. And given how simmilar OS X and Linux are (from a purely technical perspective), I set out to figure out how to adapt the configuration of the default Workgroup Server in SuSE Linux 10.0 (at the time, now upgraded to 10.1) to work with OS X user accounts.

All that was needed was to create an additional login script that would sit in the user's home directory that would be shared by all of the operating systems as was normally done for the Workgroup Server for Windows and Linux.

After I figured out the login script, I just needed to join all of the systems to the server as a Windows Domain Controller through Active Directory.

thanks. you are awesome. i'm not sure about most people, but i'd like to know how to do it with Mac OS X Server instead of Linux. but either way