[olug] Samba roaming profiles

[Phil Brutsche]

What you see happens when there is a process stuck in the background
when the user logs off - the machine is not able to fully sync the
profile to the network storage location due to files (or the registery)
being in use, and the locally cached copy is deleted when the user logs
on again.

The stuck process could be anything, and in my experience *has been
anything* - any and all Mozilla products, IE, various MS Office
components, OpenOffice, etc etc etc. At my office the Mozilla products
are probably the biggest offenders.

The best solution would be to:
a) ditch roaming profiles - definitely for the laptops, maybe for the
desktops as well
b) redirect the Desktop and My Documents folder to SMB shares - all
users on all machines, period end of story.

You can then use offline files so that the laptop-equipped users can get
to their files when they have their laptops with them off-site.

Redirecting the Desktop and My Documents will also greatly shorten login
and logout times.

You should also consider redirecting Application Data to an SMB share as
well, at least for the desktops.

<warning keptin, flame war incoming!!!>
And, dare I say it, if you are using Samba as a domain controller (you
didn't explicitly say so, but it sounds like it), ditch it. At best it
is a poor replacement for an NT4 domain controller. The specific piece
of functionality you need - flexible group policies - didn't exist under
NT4. They were introduced with Windows 2000 and Active Directory in 1999
- almost 10 years ago!

Most of what you want to do is trivial in an Active Directory
environment, which Samba won't be able to provide until the mythical 4.0
is released. And I don't see that happening until 2009 at the earliest,
and very easily won't be until the next decade.
</flame war warning disabled>

Alternatively, you could configure the local group policy via gpedit.msc
(this requires an XP Professional machine), and manually copy the
policies (stored under C:\WINDOWS\System32\Security\Templates) to the
other machines. IME the XP Pro templates work fine on XP Home.

However, DO NOT mix the templates between different Windows versions, ie
don't put the XP templates on a 2000 machine, or XP templates on a Vista
machine, or Vista templates on an XP machine, etc etc etc. I don't know
what the affect will be.

Craig Wolf wrote:
> So, here is the situation.  Setup the Opensuse server running samba
> and roaming profiles.  This has worked GREAT up until just recently.
> They started adding laptops to the mix and as I understand it, with
> roaming profiles, when you login, it overwrites what is on the local
> station by bringing down your profile from the server.  This has
> caused lost files on the laptop, yes just disappeared from the users
> desktop and/or My Docs.
> 
> Looking for ideas to get around this.  Three I have thought of are: 
> 1. removing roaming profiles completely after informing them of such
> 2. selective people having roaming profiles
> 3. selective machines getting roaming profiles
> 
> I know that 1 will work but half of the 10 person office do not have
> laptops so that is not the first choice.  I have not found any info
> for 2 or 3.  Looking for help on what people have done, if numbers 2
> or 3 can work, or maybe a better idea for my laptop users.
> 
> Signed, getting confused...
> 
> Thanx for any replies!!
-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us