First, I dont know if this issue is related to Samba or to Windows, but
since all of our clients logon to a samba-served windowsdomain I suspect
this problem at least is related to samba.
Background
We have 80 clients serving around 1000 users (this is a computerroom for
students). Clients are running a Windows XP SP1 fully pathed
installation. All users log on to a samba domain (samba 3.0.13 running
on a fully pathed Solaris 9 machine). All users use the same profile, a
mandatory profile. Group policy settings are set so that the profile
should be deleted upon logout. About 3 months ago login problems started
to occur for some users, and over the last time the number of users
experiencing problems has steadily increased.
Problem
When a problem-user tries to login Windows delivers a message telling
the user that it can't remove a file from the (Internet Explorer's)
Temporary Internet Cache because this filename is too long. Because of a
group policy setting the user is not allowed to login if the profile
cannot update it self, hence the users cannot use that computer. This
shouldn't be happening cause 1) the profile is supposed to be deleted
upon logout and 2) the profile is not supposed to be deleted upon
logging in. The problem is bound to the local computer, but it seems
that once a user get the problem on one computer it "spreads" to other
computers. Deleting the entire local profile on one of the
problem-computers resolves the problem (at least temporarily).
Around the time that the problem first turned up we did install some
critical patches, and upgraded samba (from 3.0.5 if i remember
correctly). I don't know if the problem is related to any of those
actions though.
Have anyone else experienced similar problems?
How do I solve the problem? I could schedule removal of all local
profiles on all computers, but that is not a solution to the problem but
only to the symptoms.
Any help is much appreciated.
Regards
Linus
