[Samba] How to recover: Lost /var/lib/samba/profiles restoring from disk crash

[Gary Dale]

Your roaming profile should be on the last Windows computer you used. 
When you log on again, Samba will rebuild the roaming profile from the 
local profile on your Windows computer.

If Windows can't find your roaming profile, it likely is having a 
problem with ACLs. in your smb.conf, try setting:
     profile acls = yes
then restart samba. You should be able to log in properly, although the 
first time will take a while as it rebuilds the profile.


marvin wrote:
> I had configured a linux server as a PDC for my home network with a 
> couple windows boxes.
> I had a disk crash, and recovered all of my configuration from 
> backups.  I installed fc6 instead of fc4, with whatever samba came 
> along with it (3.0.23c).  But somewhere along the line I realized that 
> I had no backups of /var since I long ago learned that /var was for 
> stuff that you don't need to backup (sic).
>
> Now /var/lib/samba/profiles should contain my roaming profile, but 
> when I log on to a windows box it says it can't locate my remote 
> profile (not surprisingly).  Is there a way to reconstruct the 
> profiles directory contents by copying my NTuser.dat from the windows 
> box, or something?
> Here are the (I think) relevant parts of my configuration:
>
> [global]
>    netbios name = TERMITA
>    workgroup = AURORAHIGHLANDS
>    wins support = yes
>    passdb backend = smbpasswd
>    os level = 33
>    security = user
>        time server = yes
>    preferred master = yes
>    domain master = yes
>    local master = yes
>    domain logons = yes
>    logon path = \\server\profiles\%U
>    logon drive = H:
>    logon home = \\server\share\%U
>    logon script = logon.cmd
>    server string = Share Server
>    add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd -d /dev/null -g 5000 -s 
> /bin/false -M %u
>    hosts allow = 192.168.1. 127.
>    interfaces = 192.168.1.0/24
> [netlogon]
>    path = /var/lib/samba/netlogon
>    read only = yes
>    write list = ntadmin
>
> [profiles]
>    path = /var/lib/samba/profiles
>    writeable = yes
>    create mask = 0600
>    directory mask = 0700
>    valid users = user1,user2
>
> Thanks!
>
> Marvin