[UniMacTech] OSX Server 10.5 and roaming Windows Profiles

[Declan McQuay]

copy/paste from my email on the Mac server list, want to see if anyone 
has a suggestion/tip/solution here:

Hey,

Just been caught out big time when moving from our current 10.4.11 
Server to 10.5.6 Server (different hardware, so easy to roll back to 
Tiger). Everything was going well till I came across our Windows roaming 
profile volume (which is stored on the Xserve RAID).

 With OSX Server 10.3 and 10.4, in smb.conf there was a path under 
[profiles] which pointed to that volume for (/Volume/Profiles) and 
worked well in most cases with the 250 so users, a third of them being 
Windows users.

However during my testing of 10.5 I must have missed the way OSX 10.5 
deals with Windows profiles. The smb.conf kept in /etc is nothing like 
what I have seen before, and the smb.conf under /var/db is close to what 
I used to deal with under 10.3 and 10.4. The /var/db smb.conf keeps the 
Windows profiles under /Users/Profiles.

I have tried tricks like changing the path in the /var/db/smb.conf, 
which totally breaks the Windows/SMB system. I tried adding profile path 
information in the /etc/smb.conf, but that did nothing.
I tried being tricky and making the Profiles folder under Users an alias 
to the /Volumes/Profiles volume, but all that does is come up with a 
heap of permissions issues.

I've since rolled back to 10.4.11, which allows users to have the 
roaming profiles and allows me to change smb.conf without causing trouble.

Everything else seems to work, like my login scripts for the Windows 
machines, and home directories mount properly, it is just the roaming 
profiles that is stopped things. I don't really want to move the Windows 
users to local profiles, since there are a few of them who move around 
PCs, and the pain of having to recreate profiles and preferences, it can 
be annoying. How come I can't easily change the path? Why just changing 
a path cause the SMB system in 10.5 die?

If someone can help or provide some tips it will be greatly apprieciated.

Thanks,

Declan

note: What I mean by SMB dying, is that on the XP machines after 
modifying /var/db/smb.conf either makes them not recognise the domain or 
say that the server does not exist.

-- 
Declan McQuay
Desktop Support Officer
Faculty of Science Monash University
Maths IT Help Webpage:
http://wiki.med.monash.edu.au/MathematicalSciences/MathsITGuide
For all IT issues please use Jobdesk:
http://jobdesk.med.monash.edu.au/login/index.cfm?jobdesk_id=9