path: root/docs/textdocs/PROFILES.txt

Contributors:	Bruce Cook <BC3-AU@bigfoot.com>
		Copyright (C) 1998 Bruce Cook

		John Terpstra <samba@samba.org>
		Copyright (C) 1998 John H. Terpstra

		Wolfgang Ratzka <ratzka@hrz.uni-marburg.de>
		Copyright (C) 1998 Wolfgang Ratzka

Created:	April 11, 1998
Updated:	April 11, 1998

Subject:	User Profiles
===========================================================================

From BC3-AU@bigfoot.com Sat Apr 11 13:36:05 1998
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 17:13:49 +1000
From: Bruce Cook <BC3-AU@bigfoot.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <samba-ntdom@samba.org>
Subject: RE: A question about NT Domains

Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton writes:
 > On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Jean-Francois Micouleau wrote:
 > 
 > > On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
 > > 
 > > > ah, then i need to explain better.  two or more users have identical
 > > > profiles.  say only one user installs a program which adds additional keys
 > > > into the registry.  those keys, as i understand it, will *not* be removed
 > > > from HKEY_LOCAL_USER when subsequent users log in.
 > > 
 > > under W95 or NT ?
 > 
 > my experience is with Win95, but i expect the same for NT, and have been
 > told that it is so by someone who runs NT admin training courses.
 >  
 > > and why do you want to have one profile shared between multiples users ?
 > 
 > you don't.  how did you get that impression?  i said multiple users with
 > identical profiles, not multiple users sharing one profile.

In my experience with both Win95 and NT, is that the HKEY_LOCAL_USER information
is stored in USER.dat or NTuser.DAT for NT.  ALL of this branch is in this file
and there is no overlap between any two users (Unless you have '95 set up
to use a single common profile).

[** lkcl: see jht's message for conditions under which an overlap can occur **]

The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE branch is machine based, and shared by all users of that
machine.


[And now for a whole stack of caveats]

1. User start menu paths are not stored in the registry (obviously) they're
   a directory structure that located by settings in HKEY_LOCAL_USER.

   If you want start menues / desktop / favorites to be individual to a user
   you must set up your user registry so these can be located individually.
   The easiest tool to manage this is the policy editor.
   
2. When you log onto 'Doze 95, it has to find the user registry.


   If you have specified a common profile, a "default user" USER.DAT is used.

   If you have specified individualised profiles, then USER.DAT will be found
   by the following formula:

	1. if NET USE x: /HOME was used at startup, try for x:\USER.DAT (where
	   x: is any drive letter from A to Z.
	   if no USER.DAT is found go to step 3

	2. if no home is specified in a mapping,
	   ...\windows\profiles\username\USER.DAT is used. If no USER.DAT exists
	   go to step 3.

	3. If neither of the previous two found a USER.DAT, then it will use
	   a prototype USER.DAT which it will later save to the above specified
	   path when the user logs out.

	   The interesting thing here is that the prototype USER.DAT used here
	   is actually a copy of the last USER.DAT used on this machine.  (This
	   may be the effect that the original poster is seeing)

	4. As discussed above the start menu and desktop are specified in the
	   registry contained within USER.DAT.  When a new USER.DAT is created
	   from a prototype, new directories are created for the start menu and
	   desktop ACCORDING TO HOW THE COPIED PROTOTYPE DEFINES THEM.

	   So if the prototype USER.DAT says that start menu is in H:\Start Menu
	   but programs folder is C:\windows\start menu\programs, then the
	   H:\start menu will be created, and the existing machine programs
	   folder used.

	   This means that is is important when creating roving profiles to get
	   your prototype USER.DAT and general user directory structure set up
	   exactly as you want it, and then make a copy of it that you know will
	   be safe from modification.  When creating a new user you then copy
	   this prototype into the new user area, so that the new user doesn't
	   just inherit what the previous user had.


3. When you log onto 'Doze NT, it has to find the user registry.


   NT is easier to see what's going on, but follows much the same rules as
   '95.  The big difference being that 'NT gets its profile location from
   the login server when it's logged in. (On an NT system have a look at user
   manager/user/profile - you will see that you can specify the user profile
   path) Under NT3.51 this profile path was a path to NTuser.DAT, on 4.0 this
   seems to be a path to a directory structure (haven't played with many NT4
   servers)

   I'm not sure how this works in samba, as I haven't yet tried the NT_DOM stuff
   yet (Luke: I assume you have a keyword for this?)

[lkcl: nt workstations should look in exactly the same places for things on
       samba or other SMB servers as they do on an NT server, as long as that
       SMB server looks like NT.  if anyone finds that something fails, alert
       us on samba@samba.org and we'll look into it].

   When an NT system find a user without a NTuser.DAT, it copies from a
   prototype that it stores especially for this purpose, so while unlike '95
   the user doesn't get whatever happened last on the machine, the user will
   get a fairly minimalist configuration.

[[jht:
When a Win95 machine logs onto a Windows NT Domain the Win95 machine looks
for the presence of a file called Config.Pol in the following location:
	\\"Authenticating Server"\NETLOGON
It reads this file and uses it to ammend both the desktop environment as well
as the file %WinDir%\Profiles\%USERNAME%\User.DAT. As with Windows NT, on log
out this file gets written back to the profile server into the %USERNAME%
directory in the profile share.

It is thus possible to share a common desktop profile between Windows NT and
Windows 9x.
:jht]]


4. There are a *LOT* of reasons that the 'doze machine might not find USER.DAT
   and therefore default to a prototype.

	1. Can't execute logon script & therefore no /HOME mapping (Most common)
	   .Make sure the script exists
	   .that you have your logon script set right
	   .Netlogon share must exist
	   .Protection/ownership of the script and share

	2. no /HOME mapping in the logon script

	3. no home path specified in /etc/smb.conf (Or no home mapping set
	   up for that user in NT's user manager)

	4. Protection/ownership of the user directory

	5. protection/ownership of USER.DAT

	6. basic networking problems
	   .Is the networking available (Test it by manually mapping
		to both the user share and netlogon share)
	   .Was the networking working during logon ?

	7. Has it defaulted to a prototype, and then had you map the home
	   directory afterwards ? - This will result in the bad prototype
	   being written into the users home, and them being stuck with it,
	   (Just replace USER.DAT again)


5. Interesting NOTE

	When '95 is performing the logon script, the HKEY_LOCAL_USERS has
	NOT been mapped from the USER.DAT. What has been mapped at this stage
	is the prototype registry (last one used).

	I assume the reason for this is that '95 is waiting for the logon
	script to complete so that it can identify where the user's home
	directory is.

	If at this point you attempt to do anything that uses the USER registry,
	(installing something for example or reading something from the user
	registry) you will actually be operating on the machine stored prototype
	profile not the user profile.  This means that nothing will realy
	happen to the user setup (No menu items, no settings etc).

	To get around this you can name a process in the "run once" entries in
	the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE branch, and these "run once" processes will be
	executed once the USER.DAT is loaded, and all the user directories are
	accessible.


To sum up:

	NET USE H: /HOME
	is the key to getting your user profiles loaded from a server.
	NET USE H: \\server\homes
	Won't get it right without a lot of stuffing about.
	 
	Windoze '95 goes through a lot to bring you your user profile and
	if anything goes wrong during this process, it will drop back to
	using whatever profile was last used on the machine.
	 

From samba@aquasoft.com.au Sat Apr 11 13:48:54 1998
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 09:34:08 +1000
From: Samba Bugs <samba@aquasoft.com.au>
To: Multiple recipients of list <samba-ntdom@samba.org>
Subject: Re: A question about NT Domains

Just for the sake of completeness I thought I'd add a bit to this.
Let's be clear about which files affect registry changes (or contents).

Under NT, open a command prompt interface:
cd %SystemRoot%\System32\config
dir

The standard registry files are:
	Default	- all component default settings
	System - all HKLM\System entries
	Software - all HKLM\Software entries
	Security - Domain/Machine releated User Rights & Privs.
	SAM - the Security Access Manager database (ie:Passwords etc.)

[[jht:
The SAM and Security files are the only files that get synchronised between
Windows NT Domain Controllers.
:jht]]

These are used by EVERYTHING!!

When a user logs in the following files get checked:
	1) \\"Authenticating Server"\NETLOGON\NTConfig.Pol
	2) %SystemRoot%\Profiles\Policies\NTConfig.Pol
		this one is a copy of the last NTConfig.Pol downloaded
		from (1) above - if available.
	3) %SystemRoot%\Policies\%UserName%\NTUser.DAT

[[jht:
The System Policy Editor on Windows NT can be used to create both the
Windows 95 "Config.Pol" file, as well as the Windows NT "NTConfig.Pol"
file. To create the Windows 95 policy file you MUST load the Windows 95
policy template BEFORE creating the Config.Pol file.
:jht]]

The later, is first obtained from a profile server if the User_Init_Info
passed from the Domain Logon Server specifies use of a roaming profile.
If item (3) does NOT exist and/or NO default profile is available one gets
created from the system default settings PLUS the last loaded file at item
(2) above.
 
The HKCU is always unique to the currently logged in user, BUT if the
currently logged in user is using a shared profile that has NOT been made
exclusive then on logout  the HKCU will be written over the top of the
source files. That is why Mandatory profiles are essential when sharing a
roaming profile.

On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, Wolfgang Ratzka wrote:

> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> 
> > my experience is with Win95, but i expect the same for NT, and have been
> > told that it is so by someone who runs NT admin training courses.
> 
> On NT it is quite definitely not so. HKCU will always be loaded completely from
> the user's NTuser.dat file and unloaded again after logout.
> In fact HKCU is not a proper registry hive but a symbolic reference to the subkey of
> HKEY_USERS that corresponds to the current user. If more than one user 
> is active on an NT machine (on plain vanilla NT this *is* possible if you have
> services running as a non-system user; on WinFrame or Hydra multiple users
> can be logged in) you will see several subkeys of HKU that correspond to
> the active users and don't interfere with each other.
> 
> Of course some settings that a user can change do not go into the HKCU hive
> but into HKLM, most notably the screen resolution and the number of colours
> (you can use policies to prevent user's from changing these).
> Some applications put information that should go into HKCU into HKLM instead.
> (Hall of Shame: Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Office 97 [User dictionaries!]...).
> Others just use plain good old INI files in their program directory or even 
> in \WINNT\SYSTEM32. Those changes will not be user specific but machine 
> specific and those programs will cause trouble, when one tries to run them
> on WinFrame or Hydra... :-).
> 
> Summarizing:
> 
> Q: Will the next user inherit a previous user's additions
>    to the HKCU registry hive?
> A: Quite definitely not.

Correct.

> 
> Q: Can a user foul up the configuration for the next user?
> A: Quite definitely yes!

See above. Yes, but not if correctly configured.

> 
> Q: Is this discussion out of place on the samba-ntdom list?
> A: Errr....

Errr... Really? I think it is. Do we, or do we not, want to help people to
gain stable and dependable use of samba?

> -- 
> Wolfgang Ratzka (dialing in from home)

Cheers,
John H Terpstra (Also from home!!!!)

=============================================================================
Further notes by Bruce Cook

Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 14:12:22 +1000
From: Bruce Cook <BC3-AU@bigfoot.com>
Subject: Re: Win95 / NT Profiles (was: RE: A question about NT Domains)

Ah yes I knew there was something I forgot.
here it is for completeness.

=============================================================================

When a user logs into a specific machine for the first time, they will be
told that they've never logged into the machine, and would they like to
store the user setting for future use.

If the user answers NO, they will be nagged about this every time they
log into the machine until they say YES. (How about it MS, could we
possible do something about this feature?)

When the user answers YES, thereafter upon logging out of the machine,
a copy of the user's profile is also written onto the machines local disk
for later use.

When a user logs into a machine where his/her profile has previously been
saved, a comparison is made between the date of the profile copy kept on
the machine, and the date of the profile stored on the server.  In theory
the server date should be later or the same.

If the local machine date is later than the server date, the client
machine will tell you the the settings on the local machine are more
recent than those of the server, and would you like to user them instead.

This occurs for a couple of reasons:
	1. Server not available when the user logs out
	2. Date mismatch between the server and the client
	   (I always use NET TIME \\server /SET /YES in my logon scripts)


Logging in with NO server available.

In some cases a client will want to log into a network with no server
available. (Portables away from the office, or a dead server)

This can only happen if the administrator has NOT set the machine to
give access only upon password verification from the server.
(If the admin has done this, it can be circumvented by restarting
 the machine in safe mode, and running poledit, or regedit and
 disabling that feature)

If you are able to log in while the server is unavailable, you have
two choices
	1. Log in as a user that previously stored a profile
	   (The password won't have to match unless the machine
	    is set up to store passwords)

	2. log in as the default user (bit the cancel button or escape key)

If you choose to use your profile stored on the local machine, there are
several things you should be wary of:
	1. the profile stored on the machine will be a copy of the last
	   profile used when you logged into THAT machine.  You may get
	   quite an old profile.
	2. When you log out, that local profile is garunteed to be later
	   than the one on the server, and if the server is available, or
	   you later log into that machine when the server is available
	   you could overwrite the good server profile with a bogus profile.


Technique note:
	I set portable computers up so that they don't use roaming profiles,
	rather they have a single profile kept on the machine.  This means
	that a user has the same desktop look an feel regardless of where
	they are.   This follows the philosophy that laptops tend to be used
	by only one person.