samba - Oct 2007 - Profile Location Best Practice

I have a question about using roaming profiles in a Samba PDC controlled 
domain.  I know that with Windows 95 and that generation or so, the 
profile had to be stored in the same directory as the home folder.  
("/sambahomes/john/profile" for example.)  You didn't have a
choice
because of technical reasons.  But that restriction no longer applies 
with modern versions of Windows, and it seems like the convention has 
shifted to that of storing profiles in one place 
(/sambaprofiles/john/profile) while storing home directories in another 
(/sambahomes/john).

What is the advantage of this setup, if any?

Thanks,
- SG

Server Gremlin wrote:
> it seems like the convention has shifted to that of storing profiles
> in one place (/sambaprofiles/john/profile) while storing home
> directories in another (/sambahomes/john).
> 
> What is the advantage of this setup, if any?
The key advantage is that if the profile is stored within the user's
home directory, the Windows workstations will sometimes discconnect the
user's home directory network drive mapping during logout before the
profile has finished synchronizing between the workstation and the
server, and your users may have broken profile problems.

I have multiple samba servers running at several sites, some with
profiles in the home directory and some with the profiles stored under a
separate profile share.  From experience, the samba servers with a
separate profile share have much less problems with profiles breaking.

Unfortunately, I've seen several distros ship their samba smb.conf with
the users' profiles in the users' home directory, which is where my
coworker and I have argued endlessly about.

-- 
Eric Feldhusen
Network Administrator    http://www.remc1.org
eric@remc1.org
PO Box 270              (906) 482-4520  x239
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Hancock, MI  49930      (906) 370 6202 mobile