[CentOS] Problems with Samba-based Home-Directory

Hi folks,

I'm running CentOS 6.6 on my workstation. There I have a user meikel, 
and its home directory /home/meikel ist stored on a samba share on a 
server which also runs CentOS 6.6.

In the very beginning I added the mount options for that home directory 
into the /etc/fstab file which led to some problems, so I set up autofs 
for mounting the home directory.

The autofs seems to work for /home/meikel, but sometimes when I login at 
the GUI, I get error messages which look a little as if the home dir 
isn't available, I then also don't get my desktop background image. The 
two error dialogs which I get in that situation show the following messages:

   "Could not update ICEauthority file /home/meikel/.ICEauthority"

and

   "Es gibt ein Problem mit dem Konfigurationsserver. 
(/usr/libexec/gconf-sanity-check-2 beendet mit Status 256)"

Sorry for the german, it's not clear to me how to get it in english. 
It's something like "There's a problem with configuration server. 
(/usr/libexec/gconf-sanity-check-2 terminated with exit-code 256)"

To do some analysis I did the following:

- Restart workstation, wait until login screen appears

- use CTRL-ALT-F2 to go to a text console

- log in as root

- mount --> it seems that /home/meikel isn't mounted (and this is what I 
expect)

- ll /home/meikel/ --> it's fine, I can see alls the files and 
subdirectories

- ll /home/meikel/Dokumente/ --> it's also fine

- df -h /home/meikel --> now the mount is there

- mount | grep meikel --> yes, the mount is there

- use CTRL-ALT-F3 to go to another text console

- log in as user meikel --> I get an error saying "No directory 
/home/meikel!", but I'm logged in

- pwd --> it shows the root dir /

- id --> it shows uid=500(meikel) gid=500(meikel)

- ll -d /home/meikel --> drwx------ meikel:meikel

- echo ${HOME} --> shows /home/meikel

So the directory /home/meikel is definitely there. Can someone explain 
the error message "No directory /home/meikel!" and give any hints about 
possible problem causes? How can it say that the directory isn't here 
but I can see all the data?

Regards,

Meikel