DOMAIN.txt - NT workstation 4.0 profiles and samba

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Contributor:	Samba Team
Updated:	June 27, 1997

Subject:	Network Logons and Roving Profiles
===========================================================================

Samba supports domain logons, network logon scripts and user profiles.
The support is still experimental, but it seems to work.

[big snip]

Windows NT Workstation 4.0
--------------------------

When a user first logs in to a Windows NT Workstation, the profile
ntuser.dat is created.  The "User Manager for Domains" can be used
to specify the location of the profile.  Samba cannot be a domain
logon server for NT, therefore you will need to manually configure
each and every account.  [lkcl 10aug97 - i tried setting the path
in each account to \\samba-server\homes\profile, and discovered that
this fails for some reason.  you have to have \\samba-server\user\profile,
where user is the username created from the [homes] share].

The entry for the NT 4.0 profile is a _directory_ not a file.  The NT
help on profiles mentions that a directory is also created with a .PDS
extension.  The user, while logging in, must have write permission to
create the full profile path (and the folder with the .PDS extension)
[lkcl 10aug97 - i found that the creation of the .PDS directory failed,
and had to create these manually for each user, with a shell script.
also, i presume, but have not tested, that the full profile path must
be browseable just as it is for w95, due to the manner in which they
attempt to create the full profile path: test existence of each path
component; create path component].

In the profile directory, NT creates more folders than 95.  It creates
"Application Data" and others, as well as "Desktop", "Nethood",
"Start Menu" and "Programs".  The profile itself is stored in a file
ntuser.dat.  Nothing appears to be stored in the .PDS directory.

You can use the System Control Panel to copy a local profile onto
a samba server (see NT Help on profiles: it is also capable of firing
up the correct location in the System Control Panel for you).  The
NT Help file also mentions that renaming ntuser.dat to ntuser.man
turns a profile into a mandatory one.

[lkcl 10aug97 - i notice that NT Workstation tells me that it is
downloading a profile from a slow link.  whether this is actually the
case, or whether there is some configuration issue, as yet unknown,
that makes NT Workstation _think_ that the link is a slow one is a
matter to be resolved].


Sharing Profiles between W95 and NT Workstation 4.0
---------------------------------------------------

The default logon path is \\%L\U%.  NT Workstation will attempt to create
a directory "\\samba-server\username.PDS" if you specify the logon path
as "\\samba-server\username" with the NT User Manager.  Therefore, you
will need to specify (for example) "\\samba-server\username\profile".
NT 4.0 will attempt to create "\\samba-server\username\profile.PDS", which
is more likely to succeed.

If you then want to share the same Start Menu / Desktop with W95, you will
need to specify "logon path = \\samba-server\username\profile" [lkcl 10aug97
this has its drawbacks: i created a shortcut to telnet.exe, which attempts
to run from the c:\winnt\system32 directory.  this directory is obviously
unlikely to exist on a W95 host].

If you have this set up correctly, you will find separate user.dat and
ntuser.dat files in the same profile directory.