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

[Tomasz Chmielewski]

Gautier, B (Bob) wrote:

(...)

>>> 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.
> 
> If you are sure the user never actually visits C-Z you can maybe ensure
> you can configure the replication to avoid doing those copies.  The
> assumption is that it's low overhead anyway.

It would be a nightmare to manage if you have more than 5 users and 
don't really know where they work.


>> 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 :)
>>
> 
> This all sounds more or less feasible but any work you do at logon time
> is (as you pointed out) very time-limited.

Hey, not really.
It's perfectly fine to load a profile for 10 minutes from a remote 
server - as long as something happens (the files are being transferred), 
it's OK for a Windows workstation.


> I'd also worry about LDAP replication time-lag: you probably can't
> update sambaProfilePath during the logon and expect to see the change
> within the time available.

I wouldn't want to replicate anything.

I'd just fake "sambaProfilePath:" to point to the server containing the 
newest profile.


> How about setting sambaProfilePath for a user at logout time, based on
> the location they are logging off from?  And updating it if you get
> around to replicating the profile to a central site before they logon
> again?

Only half of it is fine. We have two things:

1) user should download the profile from the server with the newest 
profile (either local or a remote one)
2) user should upload the profile to the local server *only*

So, it will work only if we can change the "sambaProfilePath:" value to 
the local one after user logs in - which is not a problem, but I'm not 
sure if the Windows client will respect that (which I'm going to find 
out now).


> The less work you do at logon time the better, IMHO.

True.


-- 
Tomasz Chmielewski
http://wpkg.org