This parameter specifies the home directory where roaming profiles (NTuser.dat etc files for Windows NT) are
stored. Contrary to previous versions of these manual pages, it has nothing to do with Win 9X roaming
profiles. To find out how to handle roaming profiles for Win 9X system, see the
parameter.
This option takes the standard substitutions, allowing you to have separate logon scripts for each user or
machine. It also specifies the directory from which the "Application Data", (desktop, start menu, network neighborhood, programs and other
folders, and their contents, are loaded and displayed on your Windows NT client.
The share and the path must be readable by the user for the preferences and directories to be loaded onto the
Windows NT client. The share must be writeable when the user logs in for the first time, in order that the
Windows NT client can create the NTuser.dat and other directories.
Thereafter, the directories and any of the contents can, if required, be made read-only. It is not advisable
that the NTuser.dat file be made read-only - rename it to NTuser.man to achieve the desired effect (a
MANdatory profile).
Windows clients can sometimes maintain a connection to the [homes] share, even though there is no user logged
in. Therefore, it is vital that the logon path does not include a reference to the homes share (i.e. setting
this parameter to \%N\%U\profile_path will cause problems).
This option takes the standard substitutions, allowing you to have separate logon scripts for each user or machine.
Do not quote the value. Setting this as \\%N\profile\%U
will break profile handling. Where the tdbsam or ldapsam passdb backend
is used, at the time the user account is created the value configured
for this parameter is written to the passdb backend and that value will
over-ride the parameter value present in the smb.conf file. Any error
present in the passdb backend account record must be editted using the
appropriate tool (pdbedit on the command-line, or any other locally
provided system tool.
Note that this option is only useful if Samba is set up as a logon server.
Disable the use of roaming profiles by setting the value of this parameter to the empty string. For
example, "". Take note that even if the default setting
in the smb.conf file is the empty string, any value specified in the user account settings in the passdb
backend will over-ride the effect of setting this parameter to null. Disabling of all roaming profile use
requires that the user account settings must also be blank.
An example of use is:
logon path = \\PROFILESERVER\PROFILE\%U
\\%N\%U\profile