[Samba] Users' Home Folders - conflicting advice in WiKi

Rowland penny rpenny at samba.org
Sat Apr 11 10:12:01 UTC 2020


On 11/04/2020 10:55, Viktor Trojanovic via samba wrote:
>
> On 10.04.2020 22:53, Rowland penny via samba wrote:
>> On 10/04/2020 21:25, Alex MacCuish via samba wrote:
>>> The way I do it, I create the home folder share on the server and 
>>> set the required ACLs as in the wiki. Then I fill in the field in 
>>> the ADUC Pane, Profile Path. Then I click ok. At that point, ADUC 
>>> should open a connection to the share, create the new folder, set 
>>> the acl correctly and then change the ownership.
>>
>> Hang on, that isn't the users home directory, it is the users Windows 
>> profile.
>>
>> There are a couple of other attributes possibly in play here:
>>
>> homeDirectory
>>
>> unixHomeDirectory
>>
>> The first is for the path to the Windows home directory, e.g. 
>> '\\computername\users\username'
>>
>> The second is for the path to the Unix home directory, e.g. 
>> '/home/username'
>>
> Rowland,
>
> The introduction to the Wiki page found on 
> https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/User_Home_Folders states:
>
> "In the following, the directory containing the home folders are 
> shared using the users share name. Each user's home directory is 
> created as a subdirectory on the \\server\users\ share, such as, 
> \\server\users\user_name. This is the same format used in a Microsoft 
> Windows environment and requires no additional work to set up."
>
> Frankly, the whole page could probably use some clean-up in terms of 
> language and terminology but the way it is written now, I understand 
> it to be an instruction how to create Windows home directories, or 
> Windows profiles, whatever you wish to call them and the introduction 
> seems to confirm this. Which means that some of the statements, such 
> as the one mentioned by Roy, seem out of place. IMO no one visiting 
> this page is expecting to find information on how to have Samba create 
> Unix home folders.
>
> Having said that, you have shared quite a lot of useful information on 
> this topic with the list already, why not create a separate Wiki page, 
> or section at least, that discusses Unix home folders and clean up the 
> page for Windows home folders?
>
> Viktor
>
>
>
To be honest, the wikipage is a mess, it is titled 'User Home Folders' 
but then talks about profiles, the two are entirely different.

If you want roaming profiles, then the path to this is set in the 
'profilePath' attribute.

If you want to use the users home directory (which is usually mounted on 
a drive letter), you set the path in the 'HomeDirectory' attribute.

Finally, the path to the Unix users home directory is set in the aptly 
named 'unixHomeDirectory' attribute.

The other problem with the wikipage is that it states that you cannot 
use the '[homes]' share, this is just wrong, because you can.

I will rewrite the page, which will also possibly mean rewriting this 
page as well:

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Roaming_Windows_User_Profiles

Rowland





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