!== !== Application_Serving.txt for Samba release 2.0.4 18 May 1999 !== Contributed: January 7, 1997 Updated: March 24, 1998 Contributor: John H Terpstra <samba-bugs@samba.org> Copyright (C) 1997 - John H Terpstra Status: Current Subject: Using a Samba share as an administrative share for MS Office, etc. ============================================================================== Problem: ======== Microsoft Office products can be installed as an administrative installation from which the application can either be run off the administratively installed product that resides on a shared resource, or from which that product can be installed onto workstation clients. The general mechanism for implementing an adminstrative installation involves running: X:\setup /A, where X is the drive letter of either CDROM or floppy This installation process will NOT install the product for use per se, but rather results in unpacking of the compressed distribution files into a target shared folder. For this process you need write privilidge to the share and it is desirable to enable file locking and share mode operation during this process. Subsequent installation of MS Office from this share will FAIL unless certain precautions are taken. This failure will be caused by share mode operation which will prevent the MS Office installation process from re-opening various dynamic link library files and will cause sporadic file not found problems. Solution: ========= 1. As soon as the administrative installation (unpacking) has completed set the following parameters on the share containing it: [MSOP95] path = /where_you_put_it comment = Your comment volume = "The_CD_ROM_Label" read only = yes available = yes share modes = no locking = no browseable = yes public = yes 2. Now you are ready to run the setup program from the Microsoft Windows workstation as follows:- \\"Server_Name"\MSOP95\msoffice\setup MS Office Sharing - Please note: ================================ Workgroup Templates should be stored on an ordinary writable or read-only share but USER templates MUST be stored on a writable share _OR_ on the users' local machine.