NT4 profiles

[Ken Teh]

I have 2 related questions about NT profiles support in Samba.  I'm running
2.0.7.  And I'm using samba as a PDC to a VMware NT machine that has been
configured in host-only networking which means the virtual NT machine is not
bridged to the physical network but only to a virtual 192.168.x.x network on
my Linux machine.

First question, I haven't got roaming profiles to work as I expected.  I'm
an NT novice so I'm no doubt missing something obvious.  I had expected that
when a new user logs into the NT machine, his profile is created on the
profile share, but it's not.  It gets created locally within the NT machine.

There seems to be 2 differing views on how the profile share is supposed to
be set up.  In 'Using Samba', the share has to be 0/0 writable, so that it
can be uploaded from the NT machine.  In the DOMAIN.txt doc, the logon path
is specified as \\samba-server\%L\profile, suggesting that the profile
folder is in the user's home directory.  Says nothing about a profile share.

The resolution of the above has important implications for how I wish to set
up the VMware NT machine and the samba server.  I'd like to deploy VMware NT
machines to my users' Linux boxes.  The Linux boxes are NFS/NIS clustered.
It would be nice if a user can log onto any Linux machine, fire up the
VMware NT machine and get the same profile.  Thus, the latter setup, logon
path = \\samba-server\%L\profile would be preferable.  The former, a 0/0
writable share won't fly since my NFS mounts quashes root.  netlogon is not
a problem since it's read-only.

I guess the question is:  Do roaming profiles work?  How does one actually
set one up?  Does it require a 0/0 writeable profile share?  Can anyone
suggest how I might accomplish what I wish to achieve or is this basically
impossible at this point?

Thanks!


Kenneth Teh                            Email teh at anl.gov
Physics Division                         Tel 630.252.3073
Argonne National Laboratory              Fax 630.252.2864
9700 S. Cass Ave.
Argonne, IL 60439
USA