Specifying a User's Home Folder

You can specify the user's login folder at User Setting Level or per user. This is typically set at the user level, but the User Setting Level can override the user setting.

When you create a Site and select the Auto assign home folders to newly created users check box, each user account that is created will have a home folder added as a subfolder of the home folder for the User Setting Level to which the user is added. So, for example, if you add a user jsmith to the User Setting Level "Power Users," and that User Setting Level's home folder has a path of /Usr/Power Users/ in the VFS, then this new jsmith account will be generated with a home folder in the Server's VFS of /Usr/Power Users/jsmith. This is the default behavior when creating a user within the Administrator, however, you can override/change that behavior when the Site is created. If the user is created using the COM interface, or the user appears in the Server list as a result of Active Directory, LDAP, or ODBC querying the user account list in real time and finding out that it IS a valid user but not yet added to the Server, then a home folder is added as a subfolder of the home folder for the User Setting Level to which the user is added.

For Sites that use NTLM/AD authentication, if the user account has a Home Folder defined by the AD administrator, then the Server's VFS will not create a physical folder for the new user, but instead creates a virtual folder that points to the path specified in Active Directory for the home folder for that user (sometimes called a roaming profile). Therefore, if jsmith exists on the AD controller as a valid user with a home folder mapped to \\192.168.20.19\common_file_share\jsmith, then when jsmith becomes a new user on the Server (using the same path/User Setting Level from the above example), then jsmith will be assigned the home folder /usr/Power Users/jsmith which is a virtual folder pointing to \\192.168.20.19\common_file_share\jsmith.

To set a user's home folder

1. In the Administrator, connect to the server, then click the Server tab.

2. In the left pane, click the user you want to configure.

3. In the right pane, click the Main tab.

4. Select the Home folder check box. The Home folder box becomes editable.

If you want to ensure that the User Setting Level is not controlling the user's home folder, clear the Home folder check box at the User Setting Level.

5. Click the open icon  next to the Home folder box. The Browse dialog box appears.

6. Click the folder in which you want the user's folder placed, then click OK.

If you type or paste a path in the Home folder box, the Server does not verify that the folder exists.

7. To make the home folder the user's root folder, click the Treat home folder as default root folder check box.

When the Treat home folder as default root folder check box is cleared, if you built the Site with the defaults, the user's root folder is /Usr/<username>. If the check box is selected, the user cannot browse above their home directory.

8. Click Apply to save the changes on the Server.