You are unable to log in to the user account “user_name” at this time

mac-osxmac-osx-serveruser-accounts

I have a Mountain Lion server and two Mountain Lion clients.
I have two network users.
From one of the clients I can log on using either of these two accounts, from the other I cannot log using neither of these two accounts.
So it is not a user account problem.
The authentication seems to go through correct, judging from logs, but then it fails with the message from the subject of this post, with further remark that the login failed because an error has occurred no details on error.
Both client Macs are bound to open directory in the same way.
DNS works fine on both clients.
Where should I go on server searching for error?
Thanks

Best Answer

In my experience, this error message generally means there was a problem mounting the user's network home folder. Since it's happening for all user accounts on one client computer, my first thought is to check its clock -- if it's more than 5 minutes out of sync with the server, Kerberos authentication (incl. for mounting the home folder) will fail.

If that's not it, try manually mounting the home folder on the problematic client, and see if it works: log in as a local user, then get a Kerberos ticket (either with /System/Library/CoreServicesTicket Viewer.app, or kinit someusername at the command line), then try to mount the folder from the Finder (use Go menu > Connect to Server, then enter the server's URL). Doing this manually tends to give much more informative error messages and/or failure modes.

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