Integrating Win95 and Samba in detail (was Re: Problems. Bugs?)

[Louis Mandelstam]

On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, Joshua Heling wrote:

> Why Automatic Update doesn't work in general is beyond me.. Any ideas?

I appear to have it working with in Automatic mode - I know this sounds a
bit crazy (but then, what did you expect?) but it seems enabling "Load
Balance" does the trick.

Anyone know of a list where one can dicuss these weird and magical
registry issues of Windows 95, especially when delving into them deeply to
get them to do what we want, as I'm sure many Samba admins find themselves
doing.

Right now, I'm hard at work trying to resolve all kinds of "design
side-effects" with the Windows 95 workstations logging into a Samba server
here.

My objective is to move all user-specific data into their home directories
on the Samba server, so that a PC can be clean installed easily without me
ever having to worry about the user loosing any of their data, as well as
making it possible for users to roam between PCs, as well as share PCs.

So far, I have managed to get:

1. A completely automated Win95+apps installation from the server, from a
   boot diskette (for setting up new PCs or fixing completely hosed ones)

2. A completely automated install as above, but initiated by the server.
   (for fixing less-than-completely hosed PCs, or upgrading the software
    on them or making other changed on the hard drives)

3. User profiles are in their home directories, allowing roaming.  Still
   have some work to do here, such as disabling the "You have not logged
   into this computer before...." message, and forcing a "Yes" instead,
   and preventing Win95 from keeping a copy of the user's profile on the
   local hard drive after logout (and comparing it with the server version
   later) - I want it to always use the server version, period.

4. The desktop is the user's home directory itself.  It works here because
   these users only use Win95, so there aren't any non-PC/Win95 files in
   their homedirs.

5. Netscape keeps their mail folders, bookmarks, addressbooks, cookies etc
   all in a netscape\ subdirectory in the home directory.  This adds full
   roaming to Netscape as well.  The cache is kept on C: however.

6. Corel Office 7, same as for Netscape.

Still to-do:

7. Some less-often-used applications need to be added.

8. Automatic printer selection, per-workstation.  I expect I'll have to
   set up a table on the server with printer name to use for each
   workstation, and come up with a way to update the registry accordinly
   at boot time.  To make it fun, not all the printers are the same - but
   almost all understand PCL5.  I might be able to get rid of the rest if
   I have to.

The rest is more site-specific, not really topical.

Anyone else working on something like this, interested in sharing notes?

Anyone know of a list/web site/newsgroup that covers these issues?  The
Win95 Resource Toolkit has offered very little help.

Regards

---------------------------------------------------------------|-----|--
Louis Mandelstam              Tel +27 83 227-0712   Symphony  /|\   /|\
Linux systems integration     http://sr.co.za       Research {   } {   }
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