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Roaming Profiles

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by bill in dallas

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I help a small company that has a UNIX server with NT workstations. They run SAMBA with the server. I am an NT guy and know very little about UNIX. Is there a way to implement roaming profiles with the above setup? What are the procedures? Or refer me to an easy to understand UNIX/NT book that deals with the issue. Thanks.

7 replies

by mpdcsup

In order to have roaming profiles, you need to configure domain login. The current release version of Samba (2.0.7) supports a limited set of Primary Domain Controller (PDC) functions -- functions required to perform login. The capability of supporting roaming profiles is in its infancy as of the next *stable* version (2.2.0). There are still bugs.

Further, there are now 2 main code branches working towards the functionality you desire: HEAD and SAMBA_TNG. You can follow a number of informative threads from here http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/samba-pdc-faq.html

As an NT guy, you (hopefully) know some of the complexities of roaming profiles (profile size vs. time to logon and an unreachable PDC not being the least of them). You're headaches are only begining when you open this can of worms -- do you have the mettle to implement this in an open-source, Alpha-at-best, promised-until-delivered environment?

Undoubtedly, any other *working* solution is going to cost money anyway -- wouldn't it be prudent to buy an NT 4.0 Server that will perform out-of-the-box and that for which there is plenty of documentation and first-hand experience available to get you through.

I'm not suggesting giving up on Samba. What I am suggesting is that you give yourself some room to work in. When Samba can tackle what you need to deliver, move the services there. Remember to test the services firsthand and I suggest you get up to un*x speed if you're staying with your company andthey're staying with Samba.

by bill in dallas

Thanks for the info. I am going to push for an NT server to run as a PDC. It will be easier for all concerned in the long run.

Bill

by ustutz

As far as good UNIX books go:

1. O'Reilly's UNIX in a Nutshell

2. Nemeth et. al. UNIX System Administration

3. SAMS Publishing UNIX Unleashed.

From top to buttom they get thicker and more complex. No. 2 was my first UNIX book. Thenutshell book is the one I bought myself. Unleashed books I bought when I had to learn NT. Across the board, O'Reilly books are "The Reference" for serious UNIX geeks.

As far as running roaming profiles off a UNIX/SAMBA box, I am with the otherdude: I'd suggest an NT server for that.

by robertc

I don't agree with the others. I've successfully been running a Samba on a pretty powerful server with roaming profiles enabled. The disadvantage is that Samba doesn't (yet) fully understand all the ins and outs of NT domain controllers, backups andthe like, so it involves somewhat more manual setup than what you (as an NT guy) probably is used to. However, it works very well and is significantly faster than roaming profiles on an NT box, thank you (I attribute this to the excessive speed of UNIX file system handling, which is significantly faste than that of NT on the same server). As I don't run that setup at this time I have no ready config files to forward, but I recall reading the Samba docs, a Linux HOWTO and browsing the archives of the Samba mailing list (hint: it's picky with the access rights to the profiles directory on the Samba server). There's also an O'Reilly Samba book now that I believe is quite good.

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