What to do with a Laptop Before Going on Vacation

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Jan 03, 2018
2 min read

Questions Addressed

  • What should I do with my laptop before I leave for vacation?


What to do When Taking Your Laptop with you on Vacation (out of town, on a ship, etc.)

First and foremost make sure to synchronize your machine before leaving work! Find your "local to server.alias" on your desktop or the "local to server.sync" script located in your documents folder and open it. The following window should come up.

  • Now click on Synchronize located towards the top of the window. Chronosync will then backup all of your files.
  • Create a local account with admin privileges. Instructions on how to do this can be found here. This will allow you to log into the second account in case you are unable to log into your mobile account.
  • A mobile account on your laptop gives you many advantages over a local account. Since mobile accounts inherit privileges from the server it provides users with proper access to files on the server It also allows you to have one single password between your laptop and server account, so that changes from either are propagated. In future releases of OS X Apple will implement home directory synchronization (which is not implemented at IGPP), which will allow the department to backup laptops with the needs of Chronosync.

    Mobile accounts allow one to login to a laptop with or without network as it caches an encrypted credential file which your laptop accesss in case there is no network. In rare instances, your laptop may be in a limbo state where it thinks there is a network when in fact there isn't. This can prevent a user from logging in to their mobile account. To alleviate this problem, and until Apple resolves this issue in future versions, we encourage all laptop users to create a local account before leaving for a trip. This account will allow you to login and terminate any network so that you can logout and log back in with your mobile account. Instructions on what to do when you are locked out of your laptop can be found here. This will force your laptop to authenticate against the local credential file.


If you need further assistance, please contact IGPP Net Ops.