Migrating from NT to Samba: Managing non-roaming profiles.

Simo Sorce simo.sorce at polimi.it
Mon Jul 31 08:02:36 GMT 2000


Frank Fuerst wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure wether this is a samba-specific question at all, but,
> since migrating from NT to Samba appears to be common for Samba-
> users, I hope there's somebody in the list who has encountered the
> same problems...
> 
> We have a small domain with an NT PDC and don't use roaming
> profiles (because the software installed on the different PC's is really
> quite different, as is the work that is usually done on a particular
> machine). Now I've migrated a test Win95 and a test NT Workstation
> to the new domain. With the Win95 PC everything goes well.
> 
> But on the NT Wks, a new Profile named user.000 is created (just as
> if the same login name also existed for local logons). The question
> now is, how do I get every user to see his/her familiar profile when
> logging in to the new domain?

This happens because even if the username is equal the user's SID is
different, so the accounts are different.

> 
> Is it possible to just copy the file NTuser.dat and the directories from
> user to user.000, and then delete user?

No, don't do this.
In NTUser.dat files there are the user's registry portions.
These registry have permissions (as files) and copying over other users
registry may led to an unusable account becuse of wrong permissions on
registry.

> 
> Or is there any other possibility?

You may do the following (not really secure anyway).
Open every users registry loading the NTUSER.DAT of every user on a
custom registry key (hive) with regedt32 (not regedit).
Change the ownership of all the registry owned by the previous user to
everyone (This is because with samba 2.0.x you cannot retrieve the users
list in regedt32. If you are using samba TNG and you see the list of
users replace with the correct user).
save the hive on the NTUSER.DAT of the correct user.
Change also the ownership on the profile's files.


> 
> I asume that it is not possible, or at least wouldn't help, to just turn
> off the old PDC and use the old domain's name for the Samba
> domain?

Useless in effect.

> 
> TIA, Frank
> --
> Frank Fuerst, Institut fuer Biochemie und Biologie der Uni Potsdam
> Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, Haus 25, 14476 Golm
> Tel.: +49-331-977-5244;   Fax.: +49-331-977-5062
> ffrank at rz.uni-potsdam.de

Good Luck,
Simo

-- 
Simo Sorce - Integrazione Sistemi Unix/Windows - Politecnico di Milano
E-mail: simo.sorce at polimi.it
Tel.int: 02 2399 2425 - Fax.int. 02 2399 2451
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