J
John Lockwood
This problem is half due to what appears to be an Apple Mac OS X bug, and
half a bug subsequently exposed in Office v.X, I am therefore posting it
here to see if I can get feedback on the Microsoft Office v.X issue. The
version of Office is v.X with all the available patches including 10.1.5.
[ THE APPLE PART OF THE PROBLEM ]
I have come across a bizarre problem using Mobile Accounts with Managed
Preferences. I would be interested to hear if anyone else can reproduce it.
This is affecting all our laptops (and therefore laptop users). All are
running Mac OS X 10.3.5 as is the server.
As normal, I have an Open Directory Master server, which is also running
DHCP and DNS. The DHCP server is correctly configured to advertise the Open
Directory server.
A computer group is defined on the Open Directory server listing all the
laptops. This computer group has a managed preference defined to enable
Mobile Accounts on these laptops.
The above is all working fine. Laptops automatically find the server (from
DHCP) and the first time a user logs in they get asked if they want to
create a Mobile Account.
I also have defined on the same Open Directory server, several user groups
each of which has a single managed preference to define a list of printers
for members of those groups.
If a user logs in to a desktop (non mobile account) or a laptop (mobile
account) that is connected to the same network as the server, then this also
works fine.
The problem arises when a user logs in to the laptop using a mobile account
when OUT OF THE OFFICE.
According to Apple's own manuals, managed preferences and passwords are
supposed to be cached on the laptop for mobile accounts and automatically
synchronised with the server.
THIS IS NOT WORKING!
If a normal user logs in to a Mobile Account on a laptop outside the office,
then they will find NO printers available. Indeed, Text Edit for example,
will not even display the print or page setup dialog boxes. Printer Setup
Utility still does list the printers. Interestingly, it is my understanding
that even if no printers are defined the print dialog box should open and
merely say "No Printers Available".
The bizarre thing is, that if I reconfigure the laptops using the Directory
Access program to NOT use a DHCP provided LDAP server but instead manually
define the same Open Directory Server then this problem does not occur.
Remember using the DHCP provided LDAP server does work when the laptop is on
the office network.
[ AND NOW THE MICROSOFT PART OF THE PROBLEM ]
This issue has been made much worse by a bug in Office v.x (Word,
PowerPoint). Nine times out of ten, when you open an Office document, the
first thing the program tries to do (whether you want it to or not) is to
access the printer driver (e.g. you will briefly see Word say "Connecting to
Printer"). Because in this situation no printer driver is available to the
user this fails, and due to Microsoft's bad programming they do not check
for this error condition with the result that THE PROGRAM THEN CRASHES!!!
As you can imagine, employees going out in to the field and finding Word or
PowerPoint crashing every time they try and open a file is not a good thing!
I have as a test, upgraded one of the Laptops to Office 2004, and I am still
awaiting feedback from that user to see if the problem still affects Office
2004.
half a bug subsequently exposed in Office v.X, I am therefore posting it
here to see if I can get feedback on the Microsoft Office v.X issue. The
version of Office is v.X with all the available patches including 10.1.5.
[ THE APPLE PART OF THE PROBLEM ]
I have come across a bizarre problem using Mobile Accounts with Managed
Preferences. I would be interested to hear if anyone else can reproduce it.
This is affecting all our laptops (and therefore laptop users). All are
running Mac OS X 10.3.5 as is the server.
As normal, I have an Open Directory Master server, which is also running
DHCP and DNS. The DHCP server is correctly configured to advertise the Open
Directory server.
A computer group is defined on the Open Directory server listing all the
laptops. This computer group has a managed preference defined to enable
Mobile Accounts on these laptops.
The above is all working fine. Laptops automatically find the server (from
DHCP) and the first time a user logs in they get asked if they want to
create a Mobile Account.
I also have defined on the same Open Directory server, several user groups
each of which has a single managed preference to define a list of printers
for members of those groups.
If a user logs in to a desktop (non mobile account) or a laptop (mobile
account) that is connected to the same network as the server, then this also
works fine.
The problem arises when a user logs in to the laptop using a mobile account
when OUT OF THE OFFICE.
According to Apple's own manuals, managed preferences and passwords are
supposed to be cached on the laptop for mobile accounts and automatically
synchronised with the server.
THIS IS NOT WORKING!
If a normal user logs in to a Mobile Account on a laptop outside the office,
then they will find NO printers available. Indeed, Text Edit for example,
will not even display the print or page setup dialog boxes. Printer Setup
Utility still does list the printers. Interestingly, it is my understanding
that even if no printers are defined the print dialog box should open and
merely say "No Printers Available".
The bizarre thing is, that if I reconfigure the laptops using the Directory
Access program to NOT use a DHCP provided LDAP server but instead manually
define the same Open Directory Server then this problem does not occur.
Remember using the DHCP provided LDAP server does work when the laptop is on
the office network.
[ AND NOW THE MICROSOFT PART OF THE PROBLEM ]
This issue has been made much worse by a bug in Office v.x (Word,
PowerPoint). Nine times out of ten, when you open an Office document, the
first thing the program tries to do (whether you want it to or not) is to
access the printer driver (e.g. you will briefly see Word say "Connecting to
Printer"). Because in this situation no printer driver is available to the
user this fails, and due to Microsoft's bad programming they do not check
for this error condition with the result that THE PROGRAM THEN CRASHES!!!
As you can imagine, employees going out in to the field and finding Word or
PowerPoint crashing every time they try and open a file is not a good thing!
I have as a test, upgraded one of the Laptops to Office 2004, and I am still
awaiting feedback from that user to see if the problem still affects Office
2004.