[Samba] Profiles ...

[Erwin Zierler]

At 16:24 15.01.2003 +0200, you wrote:
>Greetings ...
>
>         This is a stupid question which have been wanting to ask for 
> awhile, and hope somebody can help me.

It's not stupid but it has been answerd many times ;-) Searching the
archives for keywords like 'roaming' and/or 'profile' will give you
mayne useful information.


>         Profiles, if I understand it correctly come in two forms, local 
> and roaming?  Now local in on the computer the user uses and roaming is 
> one that is download from the server when the user logs in.
>
>         Now, where my problem is, when I have some users who have huge 
> documents folder, this log on and log off takes a long time, not mention 
> the problems I have run into when their computer is turn off 
> incorrectly.  I am sure this is a Micro$oftism, but is there a way to use 
> roaming profiles, but have then use directly off the server and not 
> copied to and from the server at login and logout?

What I would maybe do first is set up a policy for those users to NOT
abuse these folders for storing such huge amount of data. Give them
a HOME on the server (if you want these data to be backup up etc.) or
tell them to use a certain directory on their machines OUTSIDE of
c:\documents....\username

If I understood it correctly there several different strategies you can follow
to prevent huge amounts of data being copied back and forth during
logon/off. One suggestion came from Patrick Gunerud slu at firerun.net:

"Just change the logon path option in your smb.conf to "logon path = ". 
When there is no path set this will make the windows clients store the 
profiles locally. "

Another tip from John Terpstra:

"Corollory:
----------
If you want to use roaming profiles (good idea!), then it is essential that 
profiles be managed. It is also important that all desktop tools and 
service be configured in such a way that the profile environment remains 
manageable. A good way to enforce this is trough the use of mandatory 
profiles (ie: ones that the user can not change). This prevents the growth 
in size of the profile. Oh yes, it also forces the site to manage the 
network more carefully. "

And for the third one search the archive for the thread "Profiles and Win2000",
there are several useful suggestions regarding your problem.

>Thanks
>Mailed
>Lee


You are welcome ;-)

  Erwin