Pros & Cons having FCP on a Open Directory managed Workstation

[Gary Askham]

We use Open Directory on all our FCP systems.

The advantages are…

– Every user has a unique login.
– Doesn’t matter which system you are working on, your user settings, dock preferences, Mail settings etc follow you around.
– It sets permissions to XSAN so you can only access the files and folders you are meant to.

The disadvantages are…

– You need an administrator to take care of the server.
– Syncing is slow, complex and doesn’t always work.
– All staff need to understand the system.

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FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Thomas Frank]

But as far for the Final Cut Pro and Co. (Adobe Cinema 4D and etc…) there should be no problems?

[Michael Gossen]

I think your only problems would be with filesystem permissions for scratch directories, distributed rendering directories, etc. ACLs on your shared filesystem should be an adequate solution though. As far as the apps, should be no issues.

Michael Gossen
Helium Digital Media

[John Heagy]

Same here though we don’t use mobile accounts all network accounts. This is not recommended for FCP but we’ve had no problems. The syncing is a big problem which is why we stick with network accounts.

John Heagy

[Thomas Frank]

What you mean mobile and network accounts and what is being synced? The accounts information, Desktop settings and etc…?

Also what is ACLs

[John Heagy]

There are 4 types of accounts:

Local: Like the admin account the OS forces you to make when you first use a Mac.

OD Local: The same as Local but an OD server stores the passwords so one needs to be connected to one in order to login. This is the minimum if shared storage is used in order to manage permissions via ACL (Access Control List)

OD Network: The same as OD Local except the home folder is on a file server. This is what we use.

OD Network with Mobility enabled: Combination of OD network and local. The home folder is local and periodically syncs to a file server so the account exists both on the file server and any machine a user logs into. The problem is keeping all the local Mobile accounts synced. The server home and the local Mobile home seem to get out of sync easily.

If you have a Microsoft environment you can use AD to manage accounts as well.