[Samba] Problem with roaming profiles on upgrade from 2.2 to 3.0

[Alex King]

I have quite a few samba installations, and I've had problems with
roaming profiles when upgrading from Samba 2.2 to 3.0.  My servers run
Debian stable, which uses Samba 2.2.3, with security patches.  At some
point Debian will release a new stable version with a recent Samba 3.0
release.  Right now I'm testing a few servers with a samba 3.0.10
backport to make sure the transition will go smoothly.

Unfortunately, I have this problem with roaming profiles and I've
already spent several days researching (google) and trying to fix it to
no avail.

When I update to 3.0, users are getting the message "Windows cannot
locate the server copy of your roaming profile and is attempting to log
you on with your local profile.  Changes to your profile will not be
copied to the server when you log off.  possible causes of this error
include network problems or insufficient security rights.  If this
problem persists, contact your network administrator.

DETAIL - The filename, directory name or volume label syntax is
incorrect."

After a bit of research, I ended up running the pdbedit command:

#pdbedit -v -u=alex
Unix username:        alex
NT username:
Account Flags:        [U          ]
User SID:             S-1-5-21-1446488701-1319150898-4256949202-3838
Primary Group SID:    S-1-5-21-1446488701-1319150898-4256949202-1201
Full Name:            Alex King,,,
Home Directory:       "\\server\alex\profile"
HomeDir Drive:        Z:
Logon Script:         UNKNOWN\alex.bat
Profile Path:         "\\server\NTPROFILE\alex"
Domain:               WORKGROUP
Account desc:
Workstations:
Munged dial:
Logon time:           0
Logoff time:          Sat, 14 Dec 1901 09:45:51 GMT
Kickoff time:         Sat, 14 Dec 1901 09:45:51 GMT
Password last set:    Mon, 01 Nov 2004 23:53:42 GMT
Password can change:  Mon, 01 Nov 2004 23:53:42 GMT
Password must change: Sat, 14 Dec 1901 09:45:51 GMT
Last bad password   : 0
Bad password count  : 0
Logon hours         : FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

And OK, while composing this email, I finally solved my problem, which
is the double quotes around the Profile Path value above.  After
resetting the Profile Path with pdbedit -u alex -p
"\\\\server\\alex\\profile", which results in the following pdbedit -v
-u alex listing:
Unix username:        alex
NT username:
Account Flags:        [U          ]
User SID:             S-1-5-21-1446488701-1319150898-4256949202-3838
Primary Group SID:    S-1-5-21-1446488701-1319150898-4256949202-1201
Full Name:            Alex King,,,
Home Directory:       \\server\alex
HomeDir Drive:        Z:
Logon Script:         \\SERVER\netlogon\WinNT\alex.bat
Profile Path:         \\server\alex\profile
Domain:               WORKGROUP
Account desc:
Workstations:
Munged dial:
Logon time:           0
Logoff time:          Sat, 14 Dec 1901 09:45:51 GMT
Kickoff time:         Sat, 14 Dec 1901 09:45:51 GMT
Password last set:    Mon, 01 Nov 2004 23:53:42 GMT
Password can change:  Mon, 01 Nov 2004 23:53:42 GMT
Password must change: Sat, 14 Dec 1901 09:45:51 GMT
Last bad password   : 0
Bad password count  : 0
Logon hours         : FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

profiles now work as expected.

Actually, my config file included the double quotes, and this
worked with samba 2.2 but not with samba 3.0.  Now that I look in the
man page, there is a warning on the logon path parameter, although it
didn't sink in for me in the past.

So to recap for the benefit of others, although I first used pdbedit to
take away the quotes for a single user, the real fix was to remove the
quotes around the logon home and logon path parameters in smb.conf.

Perhaps testparm could be modified to give a warning in this situation?

Alex