[Samba] Problem with offline drive

[BOURIAUD]

On Friday 30 January 2009 19:22:49 Adam Williams wrote:

Hello !
Here is a late answer to your advices, which are very interesting.

> Walter Mautner wrote:
> > Bad. Storing mail databases on network drives (in particular when they
> > become bigger) or storing them on a roaming profile path is not supported
> > for Microsofts e-mail programs. Even though Thunderbird/Mozilla don't
> > explicitely forbid it, it is also bad for Thunderbird.

I don't see where the problem is. I've read many things around the web 
concerning samba for instance, and many a person round the world advocate to 
pull out of the profile as many things as possible. I'm thinking of the "My 
Documents" folder for instance. So, since one can easily change the path where 
both firefox and thunderbird store their datas (Simply edit the Profile.ini), 
I thought it was a good idea to pull them both on a network drive, so as to 
avoid having to use the sync tool.
And for desktop machines, it works great. The fact is that on the 100 machines 
we have on our network, we only have 15 laptops. And they come to the end of 
the installation process.

> > You would be far better with plain local storage and synchronization or
> > imap/offline imap.
> > As a workaround, change the mail profile to a local path and use
> > Microsoft synctoy to sync with the path in M: when online.
> > For Gods sake, disable offline file function in XP.

What is the difference between those two methods ? In both case you use the 
Microsoft synctoy, let it be with the profile or with a network drive you sync 
by hand.

>
> Yes I agree here.  You can hack the registry to save the Local Settings
> folder with the roaming profile, or change the location of outlook.pst.
> But when your users aren't locally on your network, they won't have a
> connection to M:, hence outlook breaks.  Here we use Seamonkey and IMAP,
> so that all mail stays on the server.  You should really be using imap,
> it helps keeps the profile smaller, and with the mail being stored on
> the server, its better for backups and archiving. 

The fact is that we can't use imap here. Well, we could if whe would like, but 
who on earth would like to work with a 25Mb imap box ? No one. We don't have 
much space on the mail server, and whe use many attachements with mails, so 
that in half a day the imap storage place would be full.

> I also agree to
> disable offline files.  If it syncs when logging off, its no better then
> using a roaming profile, and if you have it sync at a certain time of
> day, if the user makes any changes after that time, they are log when
> they unplug themselves.  Personally, I use roaming profiles, and tell my
> users if they are taking a notebook out of town, copy the files they
> think they will need to their desktop because i redirect my documents to
> a folder on their home drive to make the roaming profiles save and load
> quicker.

As for the last solution you propose here, that's the way some of the users 
are working with, but I thought offline files would make their life easier.
So, before I forget, thanks, many thanks for your help. It's always great to 
have peoples saying what they think about such solutions, because one's need 
are differents thant another's. It is always the moment to increase the 
knowledge of some peculiar aspect of the problem.
And let me tell you that I still don't understand what you find wrong with 
offline files. Here, users don't play with their laptop. I mean if they are 
here and the laptop is online, it is on the network. If they take the laptop 
with them, then it isn't. There is no way for them to loose data, since the 
sleeping function is disabled, as well as the suspend to disk.
So, when they leave the place, they shutdown their laptop.
Well, I'll look forward to get much documentation about all this, and try as 
many a thing as I can.
Thanks again for your help.