profile directory

[Samba-Central]

On Sun, 13 Sep 1998, Jean-Francois Micouleau wrote:

> On Sun, 13 Sep 1998, Gerald Carter wrote:
> 
> > At 03:54 AM 9/13/98 +1000, Yaroslav Halchinsky wrote:
> > >The first is when new user logs in a NT workstation samba creates
> > >not the *directory* `profile' but *file* `profile' and in case 
> > >profiles do not work at all. Solution - create directory `profile' 
> > >first then log in - it works fine.
> > 
> > Does anyone know if 
> > the profile problem mentioned is a bug in the NT client or the 
> > Samba code?
> 
> 
> I took a netmon trace of an openning session for a user who doesn't
> already have a profile. The NT client is sending an NT Transact NT create
> call with the flags value set to 0. 
> 
> If I read correctly the CIFS spec, the flags value should be 8 here.
> 
> I don't have an NT server to check against, so I'm curious of what an NTS
> is doing in this case.
> 
NT always creates a directory into which the Profile structure and
contents gets stored. I have not recently sniffed this so can ot say for
sure what the flag value is, but on NT no file gets created.

NT 3.X did create a file to store the profile. The profile then would be
in a file called "User_Name".USR and to make this profile mandatory it had
to be renamed "User_Name".MAN.

So, when NT4 came along it was possible to have an NT3.X profile as well
as an NT4 profile in the same profile share without clash.

We have had the notion of a "User_Name".PDF file, but I am curious where
this came from since I have never seen it in an NT only environment.

Under NT3.X - if the "User_Name".USR file does not exist it gets created
on logout.

Under NT4 - if the "User_Name" structure does not exist at login time, the
directory structure get partly/mostly created and the NTUser.DAT file
(precisely so called = Policy File) gets created. This entire data
structure gets updated on logout.

Under Win9X - the structure can be shared (BAD idea!) and it creates the
policy file by the name "User.DAT". This way NT and Win9X policy files do
not clash.

Under NT4 if you want to use a shared profile among a group of users then
you have to go through some hoops to make that possible. We need to
understand this, else we will see the types of problems some on this list
have complained about.

To create a shared profile (normally done as a mandatory profile) then
this can be done by:
	1) Create a local profile for a dummy user
	2) Set up everything the way the real group using it should see it
	3) Log onto the workstation that has that local user profile as
	Administrator
	4) Right click on "My Computer" icon, select "properties"
	5) Select the "User Profiles" tab
	6) Select "Copy" and now copy the profile to the profile share on
	on the profile server. Do NOT forget to set the Access Control
	List at this time, you get not second chance at it. It would
	appear that this is set into the "NTUser.DAT" file itself.

Someone on this list may have a more accurate check on this process, in
which case I ask "Please document this back to the list." I have taken on
the task of preparing the new documentation for Samba-2 and making sure it
gets into the first stable release. This part of the documentation is
going to be important and a potential trap for the unwary.