[Samba] Moving Profiles

[Jonathan Johnson]

I've done this many times. More than I care to admit. :-)

Here's an archive of a previous post that I made on the subject:
   http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2004-June/087799.html

You'll also want to read this afterthought:
    http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2004-June/087800.html

My instructions are basically the same, but more detailed; one VERY
important thing you will need to do is manually edit the user's
registry hive to change paths (see the first link for instructions).
Also, you'll need to join the domain and log in with the new username
BEFORE migrating the profile, as WinNT/2K/XP will create a new profile
with an unused folder name for a new logon.

This means that if you log in for the first time as 'fred' and there is
no 'fred' profile, a profile named 'fred' will be created. If there IS
a 'fred' profile, or even an empty folder named 'fred', then the new
profile will be named 'fred.DOMAIN' or 'fred.000'. If there's already a
'fred.DOMAIN' or 'fred.000' folder, then the new profile will be named
'fred.DOMAIN.000' or 'fred.001' and so on. It's messy, but NT et al is
paranoid about destroying data in this context.

As for diabling roaming profiles, see the 'Logon Path' parameter:
    http://us2.samba.org/samba/docs/man/smb.conf.5.html#LOGONPATH
hint: include 'Logon Path =' (no paramaters) to disable roaming
profiles altogether.

--Jon Johnson
Sutinen Consulting, Inc.
jon at sutinen.com

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004, Mark Lidstone wrote:

> There are 7 users, but I was planning on having to visit each machine
> separately anyway.  That's basically what I was looking at doing, but
> you're right - doing it after joining the machine to the domain seems to
> make more sense.
> 
> On a bit of a side note - does anyone know if it's possible to turn off
> roaming profiles at the Samba server end?  On Windows it's an option you
> can set on a per-user basis, which is pretty handy.  For instance, we
> have a couple of user accounts for testing software, and it's good to
> know that if something goes really screwy with the account's registry,
> we only have to clean it off the computer it went wrong on.
> 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hamish [mailto:captainmish at gmx.net] 
> Sent: 06 July 2004 10:03
> To: Mark Lidstone
> 
> I guess there are not too many users to move over? (also that you are 
> using win2k/xp) There is a way to move the profiles *after* they have 
> been joined to the PDC.
> Log in to the machine with the new username, this will create a new 
> profile, log out immediately. Log in as an admin account (but not the 
> "addministrator" that the users were using) Right click my computer > 
> properties > advanced > user profiles > settings. Select the old account
> 
> and click copy to.. choose the new user folder in documents and settings
> 
> (this will warn that there is alreadyy a profile there and it will be 
> cleared > just ok it. The last bit to do is change permission to use (or
> 
> something very similar) change this to the new username (make sure you 
> put it in the format DOMAIN\user) - this will copy the profile 
> flawlessly to the new user, a bit slow if there are a number of them, 
> but less than 5 or so and its a good fix.
> Hope that helps,
> H
> 

> Mark Lidstone wrote:
> 
> >Hi everyone,
> >
> >I'm about to install a Samba PDC in a network that previously was 
> >working as a workgroup.  All the users have been logging into their 
> >local machines as "administrator" and all with the same password.
> >
> >What I would really like to do is to move their profiles with them, but
> 
> >as they are all using the same username and the like I can see this is 
> >going to cause problems.
> >
> >So far I have been thinking about doing the following:
> >
> >	1) Create a second administrator account on each machine
> >	2) Login as the second administrator and copy the
> "administrator" 
> >profile to another folder, renamed for the new user's username (e.g. 
> >"Documents and Settings\Administrator" -> "Documents and
> >Settings\DOMAIN.username")
> >	3) Change ownership/permissions on the new profile folder to
> match 
> >that of the new user
> >
> >I'm also planning on making sure that roaming profiles are disabled 
> >using the "LocalProfile" registry key that Michael Lueck recently 
> >posted about on here.  Users will have a network-home folder that will 
> >be backed up which should be plenty enough for them.
> >
> >Can anyone point out what problems this will cause?  I think there is 
> >going to be an issue with the registry, is the SID in there somewhere? 
> >How can I reset it?  Is there a better way of doing this?
> >