[Samba] Tips/hints for Windows network management

[stephen mulcahy]

Dave Ewart wrote:
> Are there any further possibilities with regard to policies?  Does
> everyone here just do this using the System Policy setup, via
> poledit.exe/NTConfig.POL ?

Hi Dave,

I think this section of the Samba HOWTO provides an overview of some
scenarios.

http://samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/PolicyMgmt.html

I'm relatively new to System Policies myself. My environment is a bunch
of XP machines with a Samba PDC. My current understanding is that,
ideally, you would manage a bunch of XP machines in a domain with GPOs
created via the MMC Group Policy snap-in. Unfortunately, Samba doesn't
currently support these since they are tightly bound to Active Directory.

As an alternative, you can use the older approach to Policies - System
Policies which were the standard way to do this on NT4. I've tried doing
this on my network with mixed results. Following the instructions in the
HOWTO above and the excellent documentation at
http://www.pcc-services.com/custom_poledit.html I've created an
NTConfig.pol and have had some of the settings specified in there
applied to my XP clients as people login.

Unfortunately, I've also noticed that some of the settings I set in the
NTConfig.POL using poledit.exe *are not applied* to the clients. A
simple example would be the desktop Wallpaper. I'm trying to enforce a
company wallpaper on all systems for consistency - its a good example
cos it's immediately obvious if the setting has been applied. What I've
seen when using NTConfig.POL generated from the standard templates (not
Mike Petersen's which I must go back and further investigate) is that
some settings are ignored, including Wallpaper. My suspicion is that
this is due to the Registry key for Desktop Wallpaper changing between
NT4 and XP SP2.

I suspect this may happen with lots of other setting also. Since
Microsoft's recommended approach to setting Policy on XP systems is to
use GPOs rather than System Policies they don't provide any updated XP
specific system policy templates (that I am aware of, I'd love to be
corrected on this though) you're kinda left out in the cold a little on
this one.

Is anyone else using other approaches to this?

-stephen

-- 
Stephen Mulcahy, Applepie Solutions Ltd, Innovation in Business Center,
   GMIT, Dublin Rd, Galway, Ireland.      mailto:smulcahy at aplpi.com
  mobile:+353.87.2930252  office:+353.91.751262  http://www.aplpi.com