[Samba] pseudo domain login (fast user switch)

[John H Terpstra]

On Wednesday 28 December 2005 09:50, Ben wrote:
> I've got a bunch of Win XP Pro machines, and I setup domain logins to the
> samba server so I'd have roaming profiles, etc. Alas, I've now discovered
> that windows doesn't let you use fast user switching when you do domain
> logins.
>
> I really want fast user switching -- is there a way to configure samba /
> winXP to fake some the domain login features? I don't care about password
> sync between local users and samba users. But I'd like to have, say,
> thunderbird mail settings, firefox bookmarks and ideally desktop icons,
> etc all stored on the samba server and available to a user once they
> authenticate to the samba server (which may or may not be at login)
> regardless of which WinXP box that are using.
>
> Is this possible?

Nope - fast user switching is NOT possible with roaming profiles. Its that 
simple.

On the other hand, the performance of logons and logoffs, where roaming 
profiles are used, depends on how much data has to be read from and then back 
to the profile server. With that in mind, you can get blindeningly quick 
logons and logoffs through careful use of folder redirection.  For 
information regarding how to do that, please refer to chapter 5 of my book 
"Samba-3 by Example, second edition". It is available from Amazon.Com in hard 
copy print, of in PDF from:

http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/Samba3-ByExample.pdf

PS: A well implemented roaming profile with folder redirection is almost as 
fast as fast user switching. My test environment on an 800 MHz Pentium III 
timing is about 3 seconds for a logon and about 1 second for the logoff.

Is that fast enough?

Enjoy!

- John T.