[Samba] Samba 3.4, Windows 7, Roaming profiles and Folder redirection

[John H Terpstra]

On 07/21/2011 11:31 AM, Geert Mak wrote:
> On 21.07.2011, at 17:07, Tanuki uk wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I'm quite new to Samba administration and I've inherited a working
>> samba setup with roaming profiles however the login and logout
>> times for users has been growing and I'm starting to think it's
>> time do something about it.
>
> I'd be curious what you are going to do.
>
> I personally inherited a similar situation a year ago, where the
> roaming profiles were supposed to allow the users to work from
> different locations in a 50 people company spread around two
> buildings on three floors. As far as I understand the roaming
> profiles, one has to log out in order to log in. This was the first
> problem - people used to log into one PC, then into another, and then
> wonder where their desktop items have gone (last logout overwrites
> the previous). Could be something has been set wrong, I did not
> investigate.

You are somewhat correct. The profile gets read by each machine that 
logs onto the network. Conversely, when a users logs off a machine its 
profile is written back to the profile server.

> Also they had these huge long loading and unloading
> times.

A profile includes the files on the desktop and in the "My Documents" 
folder.  Obviously, as this volume of data grows the logon and logoff 
times will increase.

> Also, they do not have everywhere the same software (some
> licenses are expensive). So I stopped using roaming profiles and
> introduced Remote desktop. Now people, who happen to be "somewhere"
> in the company and need to access their PC, just open Remote desktop,
> remember the last three digits of their IP address (192.168.1.*) and
> they are on their PC, all apps open as they have left them, etc.

Nice solution!

- John T.

> But of course, this is one scenario, which might not be good in all
> cases. Our users work 80% of their time on their PC and then it
> happens they need to work for a couple of hours on another PC, which
> happens to be free at this moment. Just thought it might help to
> share it with you.
>
> Geert.