[Samba] XP/W2K on Samba 3

[Wolfgang Ratzka]

To prevent users from changing their profile you could assign to them a
"mandatory profile", that is not stored back to the server and is
deleted from the client upon logout. (I haven't used such a thing, I
only know that it is supposed to exist.)
An easier way of making the user's profile go away upon logout is
to put him/her into the guest's group. (I am not shure which other
consequences this will have.)

To modify the default storage location for documents etc., you use a
policy that does folder redirection. (You can also use folder
redirection without using policies by directly editing the registry of
the [mandatory] profile assigned to the users.)

Some of these topics are covered in Chapter 5 ("Making happy users")
of "Samba-3 by Example" aka "The Samba Guide", see
http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-Guide/
and in Chapter 27 ("Desktop Profile Management") of the
"Samba Howto Collection", see
http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/


HTH
Wolfgang Ratzka

> Okay, let me try to explain it the simple way as I understand it.
> We are running a debian-server with debian-clients and also a mixture of 
> WIN98SE, WIN2000 and XP-clients. Users are logging in from all these four 
> types of clients. They have one personal share on /home/username accessible 
> from all types of clients (via SAMBA for WinXXXX-clients).
> This is working fine, but as soon as a user is logging into the domain on one 
> of the WIN2000 or XP-clients for the first time on this client, the client is 
> creating a local user-directory.
> 
> In a first step I would like to avoid this creating of local user-directories, 
> because after a while each user has a local home-directory on every 
> win2000/XP-client. Opening the explorer he should only find one home 
> directory, which is his samba-share on the server.
> 
> In a second step it would be great, if he is trying to save data, WORD or what 
> ever automatically offers the users samba-share for saving data.
> 
> What I do not want to offer is a personal desktop that is available from every 
> computer he is logging in. I want to have the Win2000 or XPdesktop the same 
> for all users. They can use the Linux-KDE-computers if they want their own 
> desktop.
> 
> How can this be achieved?
> Thank you for helping.
>