JohnTerpstra JelmerVernooij JohnRussell

apca72@dsl.pipex.com

You need the Win98 Group Policy Editor to set Group Profiles up under Windows '9x. It can be found on the Original full product Win98 installation CD under tools/reskit/netadmin/poledit. You install this using the Add/Remove Programs facility and then click on the 'Have Disk' tab. Use the Group Policy Editor to create a policy file that specifies the location of user profiles and/or the My Documents etc. stuff. You then save these settings in a file called Config.POL that needs to be placed in the root of the [NETLOGON] share. If your Win98 is configured to log onto the Samba Domain, it will automatically read this file and update the Win98 registry of the machine that is logging on. All of this is covered in the Win98 Resource Kit documentation. If you do not do it this way, then every so often Win98 will check the integrity of the registry and will restore it's settings from the back-up copy of the registry it stores on each Win98 machine. Hence, you will notice things changing back to the original settings. Unfortunately, the Resource Kit info is Win NT4/2K version specific. Here is a quick guide: 1. On your NT4 Domain Controller, right click on 'My Computer', then select the tab labelled 'User Profiles'. 2. Select a user profile you want to migrate and click on it. I am using the term "migrate" lossely. You can copy a profile to create a group profile. You can give the user 'Everyone' rights to the profile you copy this to. That is what you need to do, since your samba domain is not a member of a trust relationship with your NT4 PDC. 3. Click the 'Copy To' button. 4. In the box labelled 'Copy Profile to' add your new path, eg: c:\temp\foobar 5. Click on the button labelled 'Change' in the "Permitted to use" box. 6. Click on the group 'Everyone' and then click OK. This closes the 'chose user' box. 7. Now click OK. Follow the above for every profile you need to migrate. You should obtain the SID of your NT4 domain. You can use smbpasswd to do this. Read the man page. With Samba-3.0.0 alpha code you can import all you NT4 domain accounts using the net samsync method. This way you can retain your profile settings as well as all your users. The above method can be used to create mandatory profiles also. To convert a group profile into a mandatory profile simply locate the NTUser.DAT file in the copied profile and rename it to NTUser.MAN. The W2K professional resource kit has moveuser.exe. moveuser.exe changes the security of a profile from one user to another. This allows the account domain to change, and/or the user name to change. You can identify the SID by using GetSID.exe from the Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit. Windows NT 4.0 stores the local profile information in the registry under the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList Under the ProfileList key, there will be subkeys named with the SIDs of the users who have logged on to this computer. (To find the profile information for the user whose locally cached profile you want to move, find the SID for the user with the GetSID.exe utility.) Inside of the appropriate user's subkey, you will see a string value named ProfileImagePath. You must first convert the profile from a local profile to a domain profile on the MS Windows workstation as follows: 1. Log on as the LOCAL workstation administrator. 2. Right click on the 'My Computer' Icon, select 'Properties' 3. Click on the 'User Profiles' tab 4. Select the profile you wish to convert (click on it once) 5. Click on the button 'Copy To' 6. In the "Permitted to use" box, click on the 'Change' button. 7. Click on the 'Look in" area that lists the machine name, when you click here it will open up a selection box. Click on the domain to which the profile must be accessible. You will need to log on if a logon box opens up. Eg: In the connect as: MIDEARTH\root, password: mypassword. 8. To make the profile capable of being used by anyone select 'Everyone' 9. Click OK. The Selection box will close. 10. Now click on the 'Ok' button to create the profile in the path you nominated. Done. You now have a profile that can be editted using the samba-3.0.0 profiles tool. Under NT/2K the use of mandotory profiles forces the use of MS Exchange storage of mail data. That keeps desktop profiles usable. This is a security check new to Windows XP (or maybe only Windows XP service pack 1). It can be disabled via a group policy in Active Directory. The policy is: "Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles\Do not check for user ownership of Roaming Profile Folders" ...and it should be set to "Enabled". Does the new version of samba have an Active Directory analogue? If so, then you may be able to set the policy through this. If you cannot set group policies in samba, then you may be able to set the policy locally on each machine. If you want to try this, then do the following (N.B. I don't know for sure that this will work in the same way as a domain group policy): On the XP workstation log in with an Administrator account. Click: "Start", "Run" Type: "mmc" Click: "OK" A Microsoft Management Console should appear. Click: File, "Add/Remove Snap-in...", "Add" Double-Click: "Group Policy" Click: "Finish", "Close" Click: "OK" In the "Console Root" window: Expand: "Local Computer Policy", "Computer Configuration", "Administrative Templates", "System", "User Profiles" Double-Click: "Do not check for user ownership of Roaming Profile Folders" Select: "Enabled" Click: OK" Close the whole console. You do not need to save the settings (this refers to the console settings rather than the policies you have changed). Reboot.