samba - Dec 2005 - Error in documentation: Samba 3 By Example: Chapter 5 - Making Users Happy in re: Outlook

Chapter 5 of Samba 3 By Example (
http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-Guide/happy.html ) states thusly:

-----

Configuration of MS Outlook to Relocate PST File

Microsoft Outlook can store a Personal Storage file, generally known as
a PST file. It is the nature of email storage that this file grows, at
times quite rapidly. So that users' email is available to them at every
workstation they may log onto, it is common practice in well-controlled
sites to redirect the PST folder to the users' home directory. Follow
these steps for each user who wishes to do this.

Note
It is presumed that Outlook Express has been configured for use.

Launch Outlook Express 6. Click Tools->Options->Maintenance->Store
Folder->Change.

Follow the on-screen prompts to relocate the PST file to the desired
location.

-----

First, it should be noted that the above documentation is confusing, as
it first mentions Outlook then mentions Outlook Express. I recommend
updating the documentation:

++++

Configuration of MS Outlook to Relocate PST File

Microsoft Outlook can store a Personal Folders file, generally known as
a PST file. It is the nature of email storage that this file grows, at
times quite rapidly. So that users' email is available to them at every
workstation they may log onto, it is common practice in well-controlled
sites to redirect the PST folder to the users' home directory. Follow
these steps for each user who wishes to do this.

To redirect the Outlook PST file in Outlook 2003 (older versions of
Outlook are slightly different), follow these steps:

1. Close Outlook.

2. From the control panel, launch the Mail icon

3. Click Email Accounts

4. Make a note of the location of the PST file(s). From this location,
move the files to the desired location.

5. Add a new data file, selecting the PST file in the desired location.
Give this entry (not the filename) a different name such as "Personal
Folders - on server"

6. Close the Data Files window and click Email Accounts.

7. Select View or Change existing email accounts then click Next

8. Change the Mail Delivery Location to the "new" data file.

9. Go back to the Data Files window and delete the "old" data file
entry.

Note that you may have to remove and reinstall Outlook Address Book
(Contacts) entries, otherwise the user may be unable to retrieve
contacts when addressing a new email message.

NOTE: Outlook Express store files are quite different from Outlook store
files. Outlook Express store files can not be redirected to network
shares (the options panel won't allow it), but they can be moved to
folders outside the user's profile, or excluded from synchronization
with the roaming profile. While it is possible to redirect the data
stores by editing the registry, experience has shown that data
corruption and loss of messages will result. Like Outlook store files,
Outlook Express store files can become quite large, and when used with
roaming profiles can result in excruciatingly long login and logout
times while the stores are synchronized. For this reason, it is
recommended not to use Outlook Express in a roaming profiles environment.

++++

To expand on the last note about Outlook Express -- using OE's tools (as
described in the confusing documentation above) will allow you to change
the location where the OE store files are kept. However, it will only
permit you to change it to a local drive. This path is stored in the
registry. I have attempted to change to a network path via the registry,
which indeed does take, but I've run into problems. It seems that
Outlook Express expects very fast response when reading these files. If
there is any lag at all, such as you might find across a network, it
assumes the files are unavailable and creates new, blank store files.
Old messages are effectively lost, and cannot be retrieved without the
use of third-party mailbox recovery tools. If you ask me, that's sloppy
and irresponsible programming on Microsoft's part -- but then again,
maybe it's intentional to force you to buy Outlook.

-- 
--Jon Johnson
Sutinen Consulting, Inc.
www.sutinen.com
(360) 270-9317 cell

Jonathan Johnson ha scritto:
> 
> NOTE: Outlook Express store files are quite different from Outlook store
> files. Outlook Express store files can not be redirected to network
> shares (the options panel won't allow it), but they can be moved to
> folders outside the user's profile, or excluded from synchronization
> with the roaming profile. While it is possible to redirect the data
> stores by editing the registry, experience has shown that data
> corruption and loss of messages will result. Like Outlook store files,
> Outlook Express store files can become quite large, and when used with
> roaming profiles can result in excruciatingly long login and logout
> times while the stores are synchronized. For this reason, it is
> recommended not to use Outlook Express in a roaming profiles environment.
> 
> ++++
> 
> To expand on the last note about Outlook Express -- using OE's tools
(as
> described in the confusing documentation above) will allow you to change
> the location where the OE store files are kept. However, it will only
> permit you to change it to a local drive. This path is stored in the
> registry. I have attempted to change to a network path via the registry,
> which indeed does take, but I've run into problems. It seems that
> Outlook Express expects very fast response when reading these files. If
> there is any lag at all, such as you might find across a network, it
> assumes the files are unavailable and creates new, blank store files.
> Old messages are effectively lost, and cannot be retrieved without the
> use of third-party mailbox recovery tools. If you ask me, that's sloppy
> and irresponsible programming on Microsoft's part -- but then again,
> maybe it's intentional to force you to buy Outlook.
> 
Hello everybody,

I didn't try Ms Outlook, but with OE I had EXACTLY the same experience - 
using roaming profiles with 50 users and hacking windows registry to 
make it point to the network home directory created havoc.
Every time the network got a bit slow, OE reset the connection to a new 
-local- folder.
Tried using Thunderbird with Imap, but this was quite bulky, messages 
get cached locally, and if there is a lot of mail, when the roaming user 
changes workstation, he/she has to wait 'till the cache reloads (550M? 1G?).
(And for security reasons we must delete the cache anyway, and if we 
don't use cache, the thing gets slow, and......)
I then installed a web interface mail client which works quite well, but 
is not as complete as OE or Ms Outlook or Moz Thunderbird are.
I think if some guy from Mozilla would want to build an option to store 
collected messages in a (centralized) database like Mysql, Thunderbird 
would become a killer app for roaming profiles! (already tried giving 
them a hint - no response yet)

Regards
Alan

On 12/19/05, Jonathan Johnson <jon@sutinen.com>
wrote:
> Configuration of MS Outlook to Relocate PST File
>
> Microsoft Outlook can store a Personal Folders file, generally known as
> a PST file. It is the nature of email storage that this file grows, at
> times quite rapidly. So that users' email is available to them at every
> workstation they may log onto, it is common practice in well-controlled
> sites to redirect the PST folder to the users' home directory. Follow
> these steps for each user who wishes to do this.
A few more notes on PST file location:  (Some or all of this may be
beyond the scope of the Samba docs.)

Microsoft doesn't officially support storing PSTs on network drives
(see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019/), although it seems to be
a pretty popular setup.

In addition to manually moving PST files, you can set the default PST
location for new accounts by following instructions at
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/48228/48228.html.
 This setting could presumably be done using NT4-style policies, but I
haven't tried it.

We found that disabling oplocks on PSTs cut down on some locking
errors, and I've seen the suggestion from others on the mailing list
as well:
    veto oplock files = /*.pst/*.PST/
3.0.21 includes an oplock rewrite; maybe the above will no longer be necessary?

The instructions that you provided for moving PST files don't work for
PSTs that store IMAP account information.  Those can be manually moved
to network drives using a variation on your instructions:
1. Close Outlook.
2. From the control panel, launch the Mail icon
3. Click Email Accounts
4. Make a note of the location of the PST file(s). From this location,
move the files to the desired location.
5. Back under Email Accounts, click Settings for the data file, and
select the new location when Windows complains about the file missing.
However, this breaks Outlook's Send/Receive button, so we quit doing
it.  I haven't figured out a fix for this.  (From what I can tell,
PSTs for IMAP accounts store message rules/filters related to that
account, so they would be worth centralizing, even though the mail
itself is on an IMAP server.)

Josh Kelley