Samba + Win95 policies and user profiles

[Gerald W. Carter]

> I have a Win95 Network, I don't want to bother with a NT server, but
> prefer RedHat Linux with Samba (not for the price, but for the
> fiability). I want the 95 machines to run network policies (with
> automatic configuration), and users profiles, but the server is not a
> domain controller (it is not an NT) how can i do this?

For System policies read DOMAIN.txt and setup domain logins for your
Windows 95 clients.  To download the config.pol file ( created using
Policy Editor ) I use a manual update

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\control\Update]
"NetworkPath"="\\\\kudzu\\netlogon\\config.pol"
"UpdateMode"=dword:00000002
"Verbose"=dword:00000001
"LoadBalance"=dword:00000001

Here is a bare bones approach I sent ot another person who was curious
about user profiles

---------snip---------
I have several public access Windows 95 labs setup using roaming
profiles. 
They have cut down on the local administration of the labs tremendously.

Not real sure where to start though.  Here's the process in a nut shell.

- Configure a win95 client like you want it without profiles enabled.
        Setup whatever software you want, etc...

- Enable user profiles on the local PC ( not roaming yet ) by 
        Control Panel -> Passwords -> User Profiles
        I use a customized Start Menu and Desktop for each user
        Also add the registry key 
                [HKLM\Network\Logon]
                "UseHomeDirectory"=dword:00000001

- Reboot when prompted

- When you login your user profile will be located in
         c:\windows\Profiles\<username>

- Copy your user profile to some network location ( ie. h:\profile95
         assuming that h: => \\server\<username> )

- Change the registry setting in 
[HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\<username>]
"ProfileImagePath"="h:\profile95"

        Now Windows 95 should use the profile directly off of the
network. 
        I believe that you can use UNC names in the key as well ( ie. 
        \\server\<username>\profile95 )


- What I did for the labs was to images the local pc's hard disk and
        deploy the images to the other lab machines using some software
        named ghost. 

There are a couple of administrative problems that need to be worked
out.

1.      The annoying "You have never logged into this machine before..."
        solution : create the neccessary registry key during the login
        script.

2.      The initial user profile needs to be setup for a user who has
        never logged in.
        solution : user the "root preexec =" in samba to copy the
default
        user profile to the user's home directory when the [homes] share
        is mounted.





There's some other things that I did to make things a little more
manageable, but that is the bulk of it.


------------------------------------


Hope this helps.
j-
________________________________________________________________________
                            Gerald ( Jerry ) Carter	
Engineering Network Services                           Auburn University 
jerry at eng.auburn.edu             http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/cartegw

       "...a hundred billion castaways looking for a home."
                                  - Sting "Message in a Bottle" ( 1979 )