&author.jht; April 3 2003 NOTE! Roaming profiles support is different for Win9x / Me and Windows NT4/200x. Before discussing how to configure roaming profiles, it is useful to see how Windows 9x / Me and Windows NT4/200x clients implement these features. Windows 9x / Me clients send a NetUserGetInfo request to the server to get the user's profiles location. However, the response does not have room for a separate profiles location field, only the user's home share. This means that Win9X/Me profiles are restricted to being stored in the user's home directory. Windows NT4/200x clients send a NetSAMLogon RPC request, which contains many fields, including a separate field for the location of the user's profiles. This section documents how to configure Samba for MS Windows client profile support. To support Windowns NT4/200x clients, in the [global] section of smb.conf set the following (for example): logon path = \\profileserver\profileshare\profilepath\%U\moreprofilepath This is typically implemented like: logon path = \\%L\Profiles\%u where: %L translates to the name of the Samba server %u translates to the user name The default for this option is \\%N\%U\profile, namely \\sambaserver\username\profile. The \\N%\%U service is created automatically by the [homes] service. If you are using a samba server for the profiles, you _must_ make the share specified in the logon path browseable. Please refer to the man page for smb.conf in respect of the different symantics of %L and %N, as well as %U and %u. MS Windows NT/2K clients at times do not disconnect a connection to a server between logons. It is recommended to NOT use the homes meta-service name as part of the profile share path. To support Windows 9x / Me clients, you must use the "logon home" parameter. Samba has now been fixed so that "net use /home" now works as well, and it, too, relies on the "logon home" parameter. By using the logon home parameter, you are restricted to putting Win9x / Me profiles in the user's home directory. But wait! There is a trick you can use. If you set the following in the [global] section of your smb.conf file: logon home = \\%L\%U\.profiles then your Windows 9x / Me clients will dutifully put their clients in a subdirectory of your home directory called .profiles (thus making them hidden). Not only that, but 'net use/home' will also work, because of a feature in Windows 9x / Me. It removes any directory stuff off the end of the home directory area and only uses the server and share portion. That is, it looks like you specified \\%L\%U for "logon home". You can support profiles for both Win9X and WinNT clients by setting both the "logon home" and "logon path" parameters. For example: logon home = \\%L\%u\.profiles logon path = \\%L\profiles\%u When a user first logs in on Windows 9X, the file user.DAT is created, as are folders "Start Menu", "Desktop", "Programs" and "Nethood". These directories and their contents will be merged with the local versions stored in c:\windows\profiles\username on subsequent logins, taking the most recent from each. You will need to use the [global] options "preserve case = yes", "short preserve case = yes" and "case sensitive = no" in order to maintain capital letters in shortcuts in any of the profile folders. The user.DAT file contains all the user's preferences. If you wish to enforce a set of preferences, rename their user.DAT file to user.MAN, and deny them write access to this file. On the Windows 9x / Me machine, go to Control Panel -> Passwords and select the User Profiles tab. Select the required level of roaming preferences. Press OK, but do _not_ allow the computer to reboot. On the Windows 9x / Me machine, go to Control Panel -> Network -> Client for Microsoft Networks -> Preferences. Select 'Log on to NT Domain'. Then, ensure that the Primary Logon is 'Client for Microsoft Networks'. Press OK, and this time allow the computer to reboot. Under Windows 9x / Me Profiles are downloaded from the Primary Logon. If you have the Primary Logon as 'Client for Novell Networks', then the profiles and logon script will be downloaded from your Novell Server. If you have the Primary Logon as 'Windows Logon', then the profiles will be loaded from the local machine - a bit against the concept of roaming profiles, it would seem! You will now find that the Microsoft Networks Login box contains [user, password, domain] instead of just [user, password]. Type in the samba server's domain name (or any other domain known to exist, but bear in mind that the user will be authenticated against this domain and profiles downloaded from it, if that domain logon server supports it), user name and user's password. Once the user has been successfully validated, the Windows 9x / Me machine will inform you that 'The user has not logged on before' and asks you if you wish to save the user's preferences? Select 'yes'. Once the Windows 9x / Me client comes up with the desktop, you should be able to examine the contents of the directory specified in the "logon path" on the samba server and verify that the "Desktop", "Start Menu", "Programs" and "Nethood" folders have been created. These folders will be cached locally on the client, and updated when the user logs off (if you haven't made them read-only by then). You will find that if the user creates further folders or short-cuts, that the client will merge the profile contents downloaded with the contents of the profile directory already on the local client, taking the newest folders and short-cuts from each set. If you have made the folders / files read-only on the samba server, then you will get errors from the Windows 9x / Me machine on logon and logout, as it attempts to merge the local and the remote profile. Basically, if you have any errors reported by the Windows 9x / Me machine, check the Unix file permissions and ownership rights on the profile directory contents, on the samba server. If you have problems creating user profiles, you can reset the user's local desktop cache, as shown below. When this user then next logs in, they will be told that they are logging in "for the first time". instead of logging in under the [user, password, domain] dialog, press escape. run the regedit.exe program, and look in: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProfileList you will find an entry, for each user, of ProfilePath. Note the contents of this key (likely to be c:\windows\profiles\username), then delete the key ProfilePath for the required user. [Exit the registry editor]. WARNING - before deleting the contents of the directory listed in the ProfilePath (this is likely to be c:\windows\profiles\username), ask them if they have any important files stored on their desktop or in their start menu. Delete the contents of the directory ProfilePath (making a backup if any of the files are needed). This will have the effect of removing the local (read-only hidden system file) user.DAT in their profile directory, as well as the local "desktop", "nethood", "start menu" and "programs" folders. search for the user's .PWL password-caching file in the c:\windows directory, and delete it. log off the windows 9x / Me client. check the contents of the profile path (see "logon path" described above), and delete the user.DAT or user.MAN file for the user, making a backup if required. If all else fails, increase samba's debug log levels to between 3 and 10, and / or run a packet trace program such as ethereal or netmon.exe, and look for error messages. If you have access to an Windows NT4/200x server, then first set up roaming profiles and / or netlogons on the Windows NT4/200x server. Make a packet trace, or examine the example packet traces provided with Windows NT4/200x server, and see what the differences are with the equivalent samba trace. When a user first logs in to a Windows NT Workstation, the profile NTuser.DAT is created. The profile location can be now specified through the "logon path" parameter. There is a parameter that is now available for use with NT Profiles: "logon drive". This should be set to H: or any other drive, and should be used in conjunction with the new "logon home" parameter. The entry for the NT4 profile is a _directory_ not a file. The NT help on profiles mentions that a directory is also created with a .PDS extension. The user, while logging in, must have write permission to create the full profile path (and the folder with the .PDS extension for those situations where it might be created.) In the profile directory, Windows NT4 creates more folders than Windows 9x / Me. It creates "Application Data" and others, as well as "Desktop", "Nethood", "Start Menu" and "Programs". The profile itself is stored in a file NTuser.DAT. Nothing appears to be stored in the .PDS directory, and its purpose is currently unknown. You can use the System Control Panel to copy a local profile onto a samba server (see NT Help on profiles: it is also capable of firing up the correct location in the System Control Panel for you). The NT Help file also mentions that renaming NTuser.DAT to NTuser.MAN turns a profile into a mandatory one. The case of the profile is significant. The file must be called NTuser.DAT or, for a mandatory profile, NTuser.MAN. You must first convert the profile from a local profile to a domain profile on the MS Windows workstation as follows: Log on as the LOCAL workstation administrator. Right click on the 'My Computer' Icon, select 'Properties' Click on the 'User Profiles' tab Select the profile you wish to convert (click on it once) Click on the button 'Copy To' In the "Permitted to use" box, click on the 'Change' button. 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. To make the profile capable of being used by anyone select 'Everyone' Click OK. The Selection box will close. 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 Sharing of desktop profiles between Windows versions is NOT recommended. Desktop profiles are an evolving phenomenon and profiles for later versions of MS Windows clients add features that may interfere with earlier versions of MS Windows clients. Probably the more salient reason to NOT mix profiles is that when logging off an earlier version of MS Windows the older format of profile contents may overwrite information that belongs to the newer version resulting in loss of profile information content when that user logs on again with the newer version of MS Windows. If you then want to share the same Start Menu / Desktop with W9x/Me, you will need to specify a common location for the profiles. The smb.conf parameters that need to be common are logon path and logon home. If you have this set up correctly, you will find separate user.DAT and NTuser.DAT files in the same profile directory. There is nothing to stop you specifying any path that you like for the location of users' profiles. Therefore, you could specify that the profile be stored on a samba server, or any other SMB server, as long as that SMB server supports encrypted passwords. Unfortunately, the Resource Kit information is specific to the version of MS Windows NT4/200x. The correct resource kit is required for each platform. Here is a quick guide: On your NT4 Domain Controller, right click on 'My Computer', then select the tab labelled 'User Profiles'. 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. Click the 'Copy To' button. In the box labelled 'Copy Profile to' add your new path, eg: c:\temp\foobar Click on the button labelled 'Change' in the "Permitted to use" box. Click on the group 'Everyone' and then click OK. This closes the 'chose user' box. 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 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. 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. Blah goes here.