[Samba] Updating System Policy Templates / ie7 adm found

[Mike Petersen]

On Fri, 2007-03-23 at 02:37 +0100, Robert Schetterer wrote:

> Hi Mike, the main question is
> how to server the new admx format with a recent samba pdc ( my short
> overflow seems that they are stored in a different place, i maybe fail
> here), also
> i think if you wanna install a mixed setup with winxp and vista
> which isnt recommended anyway you have deploy both adms and admxs
> configured in the same way, as the complexity with configurations
> possible in policies this doesnt seem very easy done.
> So anyway the possibility to serve admx (or equal)should be included
> in samba 4 as it should work as active dir controller.
> So thats the question to the samba gurus.
> Maybe at interim reg patches ( or extracted from adms/x) will do the
> job, but i think
> they have to be different in xp and vista, also the admx migrator should
> help.

The question right now only becomes "Can Vista read and implement
policies from the NTConfig.POL file within the Netlogon share ?".  If it
can I can create all of the policies anyone would need for Vista, if it
will only read Active Directory Policies then we will have to wait until
samba implements Group Policy Objects.

The file format of adm and admx format doesn't make a difference in this
case as you could not load an Active Directory Group Policy ADM file
into the System Policy Editor anyway.  Thus I created my own templates
for Windows 2000 and XP (along with ones specifically for NT4).

I personally am not looking forward to Samba implementing Group Policies
because No One documents their changes to their networks and finding a
stupid policy in a whole Active Directory tree is a royal pain.  I
really prefer the way of including all the policies in a single file
(easy to locate, and someone has to be somewhat knowledgeable to
implement policies).

> As i understood the format change was made to near the admx programming
> language to other programming languages and simplify writing of it.
> in my eyes it just another example that windows version are not really
> compatible and shot users to upgrade their whole network .
> It dosnt make me wonder that m$ dont want you to create adms,
> in my eyes the dont wanna people doing free unlicend stuff
> anymore, so 2 days ago the pressed some windows friendly sites to get
> off their offline update packs for xp from the web.

Yeah, don't really know why Microsoft is going this direction.

> In the ie7.adm from gruppenrichtlinien.de should be allready some
> specials in, like configure search engine ( this what i read in parts
> there )
> Sorry i havent a good english site for you.
> But i rememeber there where a few unfree tools creating adms, maybe they
> upgraded to admx edit

I couldn't read that particular site, but it didn't look to give a valid
adm file anyway.  BTW: I use notepad2 to create the adm files (Free in
every sense of the word :-)

Thanks again for the info,
Mike Petersen
mgpeter at pcc-services.com