[Samba] Roaming profiles on demand?

[Rune Tønnesen]

Dear Andres

Andreas Paulick skrev:
> Hello Samba-world,
>
> We are planning to upgrade our network incl. clients and server. So
> there are then exclusive Win XPSP2-Systems and one single Samba-3
> Server on Linux.
> In the past,ocassionly there are network issues (dying switch, broken
> cable, uncooperative NICs, you all know the list :) ) so there are
> some chances to FU a roaming profile, if used.Usual, we dont need them
> because any user has his own PC. More: if I give them roaming
> profiles, the uers complain about the long start time, because they
> dont want to delete one single holliday picture in BMP-style for the
> desktop background, and because of the long shutdown time, they simply
> switch off their machines,... (you know this type of users). :(
This kind of Users are known to exist ;-)

The easiests way to cut login time to something users can cope with, is
to redirect the documents folder, this can be done by applying a
registryfile from the login script. I can post my litle trick if you
want it. This also makes backup a lot easier to have profiles and
documents a central place.
Results:
My users profiles are around 5 MB pr. user
logintime is low (10-15 sec)

The second thing to do is to use poledit to limit the size of the
profile, this way the login time is kept low.

> But there is a nice-to-have feature:
> An user can switch to another machine and take his own settings to
> this machine (this needs roaming profile) because of broken machine or
> holliday substition.
> So I want to have local profiles on client systems, and from time to
> time roaming profiles. Are there a way to realise this? If I see this
> correct, I (or better: the user) only have to do:
>
> -copy the User Profile from C: to the server.
> -local log out on the current machine
> -log in to the domain on his new machine.
>
> in return, he has to
> -log out of the domain from his actual used machine
> -domain log in on his main PC (to copy the actual profile to this
> machine)
> -log out from the Domain
> -local log in on the machine
>
> Have I forgotten some point? Is this possible? How can I do this?
It can be done if the user has to identical accounts one on the local
computer and one on the server, and he/she must keep the passwords in
sync and there might be problems with users permissions.
This seems a bit complicated, See easier solutions above

Best Regards Rune