[Samba] many servers and mobile users - "always use the most fresh user profile" - ideas?

Tomasz Chmielewski mangoo at wpkg.org
Fri Mar 10 14:45:10 GMT 2006


Gautier, B (Bob) wrote:

(...)

>> Has anyone ever dealt with the situation where users work in multiple 
>> locations, but would like to have the profiles the same?
>>
>>
>> I know it can be done easily with Windows 2003 R2, what about Samba?
> 
> About a year ago I worked out an architecture in which rsync would be
> used to replicate profiles from location to location (replication being
> triggered by *logout*, not *login*) but it never got anywhere near
> implementation as far as I am aware.  You just have to make sure you
> have enough bandwidth so you can move the profiles faster than the
> people. :-)  Of course rsync helps quite a bit.

Hmm, no, using your idea (replication triggered by logout) would mean 
that user profile would be replicated to cities A-Z, where in reality a 
given user works only in cities A and B.

Theoretically, it should be easy to do (I assume we're using LDAP):

1) user begins logon

2) some program or a script compares local (branch) and remote (central) 
NTUSER.DAT - and picks the newest

3) "sambaProfilePath:" is set according to the newest NTUSER.DAT 
location, ie.

a) no "sambaProfilePath:" entry in LDAP, if the local NTUSER.DAT is the 
newest
b) "sambaProfilePath: \\remote\profiles" if the remote NTUSER.DAT is the 
newest

4) on logout the profile should be saved locally (and perhaps at night, 
or at some interval, transferred to the central server)


Of course setting "sambaProfilePath:" value according to some script 
exit value or output is the tricky part :)


-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org


More information about the samba mailing list