Topic: Roaming NT profiles

[J. Handcock]

Hi there,

I’m having a problem setting up roaming profiles for domain logons to my e-smith box running the new Samba 2.2.1a.  I had a fresh install of e-smith 4.1.2 and upgraded to Samba 2.2.1a without trying to set up roaming profiles before the Samba upgrade.

When I log on to the domain with a Windows 2000 box, everything looks like it’s working okay – a new profile loads for the user, but when I log off (when Win2000 says it’s “saving your settings…”), I get an error message saying:

“Windows cannot update your roaming profile. Contact your network administrator.

DETAIL - The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.”

I confirmed that the roaming profile in the user’s home directory on the e-smith box is not updated.  I did some looking in smb.conf and in the documentation at samba.org, and there is a FAQ there with the question:

“The roaming profiles do not seem to be updating on the server.  Why?”

One of the fixes this document provides is:

“Make sure that the logon path is writeable by the user and make sure that the connection to the logon path location is by the current user. Sometimes Windows client do not drop the connection immediately upon logoff.  Some people have reported that the logon path location should also be browseable. I (GC) have yet to emperically verify this, but you can try.”

I also came across the question:

"Why is it bad to set "logon path = \%N\%U\profile" in smb.conf?"

"Sometimes Windows clients will maintain a connection to the \homes\ ( or [%U] ) share even after the user has logged out. Consider the following scenario.

•   user1 logs into the Windows NT machine. Therefore the [homes] share is set to \server\user1.
•   user1 works for a while and then logs out.
•   user2 logs into the same Windows NT machine.

However, since the NT box has maintained a connection to [homes] which was previously set to \server\user1, when the operating system attempts to get the profile and if it can read users1's profile, will get it otherwise it will return an error. You get the picture.  A better solution is to use a separate [profiles] share and set the "logon path = \%N\profiles\%U"  "

The default logon path in e-smith is \server_name\user_name\profile, is it not?  Is the problem described above happening to me – or is this a problem I need to fix in Windows?  I’m wondering if anyone else has any experience with this problem…  I guess I’ll try setting up a separate profiles share like they recommend above and see if that works.

Thanks for any suggestions,

J. Handcock

[karl]

Yep, had the same problem after upgrading to 2.2.1a. I did a scan in the smb.conf file and played around with locking options. I believe the one that you are after is
" strict locking = no ". I used this and everything went acording to plan. I would also suggest that you move profiles from home directories to a dedicted directory.
Hope this helps,
Karl

[J. Handcock]

Thanks Karl - I changed the "strict locking" boolean like you said and the domain logons work great now.  Did you set up a different samba share to store your user profiles in by just editing the smb.conf templates accordingly?  

Thanks for your help,

Jeremy

[karl]

Yes, I created a directory called " Profiles" in the root directory and gave it appropriate rights, then edited smb.conf throught he templates to suit.
If you need a copy of my setup let me know.
Regards Karl

[J. Handcock]

Hi again,
I'm wondering what permissions I need to set on the Profiles directory and also what entry you made in smb.conf .  I suppose I could figure this out for myself, but since you've already got it working, I've decided to pick your brain!  Thanks again for your help.

Cheers,
Jeremy

[karl]

Sure, always willing to help. Following is an excert from my smb.conf. hope this helps, Karl


# Where to store roving profiles (only for Win95 and WinNT)
#        %L substitutes for this servers netbios name, %U is username
#        You must uncomment the [Profiles] share below
   logon path = \%L\Profiles\%U
#============================ Share Definitions ==============================

[Profiles]
   path = /Profiles
   writeable = yes
   browseable = no
   create mask = 777
   directory mask = 777

[karl]

Oh btw, you might be able to help me with a problem. How do your W2K machines work on Samba 2.2.1a. Mine are really slow at file coping between workstation and server. Also it appears to have broken the web etc for internet access. I am getting alot of time out problems on a perm 56k link,
Thanks again, Karl

[J. Handcock]

Hi again Karl,

Thanks for the info on the profiles share in smb.conf.  This may be a stupid question, but do I need to set permissions on the profiles directory using 'chmod' at the command prompt or is it taken care of with the entries in smb.conf?

With regards to your question, so far I haven't noticed many speed problems copying from W2k to the e-smith box running Samba.  I copied a few large files over (> 60 MB) and they seemed to go pretty quickly.  I noticed a little while ago, however, when I was copying over a folder that was fairly large and had many different documents, things moved along pretty quickly at first and then slowed right down and eventually stopped.  I had to kill the process using the NT task manager because it wouldn't respond.  I tried a few different times and the same thing happened.  I finally just copied over a few documents at a time and it worked fine.  This was back when I was using Samba 2.2.0 though.  Did you have the same problems using an older version of Samba?

Are you having problems with your e-smith box as an internet gateway then?  I have a cable connection to the internet that I plug in to my e-smith box and it acts as a gateway for me.  I was using a really cheap network card on one of my machines on the network a while back and I was getting a ton of collisions on my internal interface on the e-smith box and my hub collision light kept going off.  I swapped it with a newer card that was not so cheap and things were moving much quicker and I had fewer collisions.  You can see the number of collisions on the different interfaces on your e-smith box by typing 'ifconfig' at the command prompt.  I don't know if this has anything to do with your problem or not... I'm kind of a linux rookie.  Other than that, I have no idea.  I haven't had any problems with my e-smith machine as a gateway since I did the Samba 2.2.1a upgrade.

Let me know how it goes...

Cheers,
Jeremy

[karl]

Sorry, forgot to tell you, yes the directory /Profiles needs to ' chmod' 777 for it to take place. when win2k crates the profiles, it looks after the rest of the equation.
I seem to have had the problem re gateway since upgrading. I might go back to e-smith original and try again. copying files still seams to be an issue.
I'll keep plugging along.

Regards Karl

[J. Handcock]

Sounds good - a fresh install is a good place to start.  Best of luck, Jeremy

[Eric]

Since it sounds like you guys may be experts on win2000 login can anyone tell me how you make your domain login ID an administrator on the windows 2000 machine.

Thanks
Eric

[Hsing-Foo]

Youre answer is right here in the forum...

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=11143.msg41976#msg41976

Hope it helps.

Reagrds

HFW

[Patrick Basile]

Hey guys,

Since you seem to be running Samba 2.2.1a/Win2k "domains" and roaming profiles, I am wondering if your Win2k client machines take a long time (like 60 seconds) when a user logs in to the domain?  On my NT4/Win2k domain (a real Windoze server/domain) the login takes less than 10 seconds.

Any ideas?

[Bobby]

G'day.

I still get this error:

“Windows cannot update your roaming profile. Contact your network administrator.

DETAIL - The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.”

BTW:  Workstation is a Win 2000K Professional.

I am at a loss here.  Tried everything you all suggested, (I think), and even some other things.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

~Bobby

[David Brown]

Set strick locking = no in the appropriate smb.conf template. Samba isn't allowing your client to save the profile back to the server because it is locking those files.

David Brown