created from a really useful discussion about Win95 / NT profiles.

[samba.git] / docs / textdocs / PROFILES.txt

Contributors:   Bruce Cook <BC3-AU@bigfoot.com>
                Copyright (C) 1998 Bruce Cook

                John Terpestra <samba-bugs@samba.anu.edu.au>
                Copyright (C) 1998 John H. Terpestra

                Wolfgang Ratzka <ratzka@hrz.uni-marburg.de>
                Copyright (C) 1998 Wolfgang Ratzka

Created:        April 11, 1998
Updated:        April 11, 1998

Subject:        User Profiles
===========================================================================

From BC3-AU@bigfoot.com Sat Apr 11 13:36:05 1998
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 17:13:49 +1000
From: Bruce Cook <BC3-AU@bigfoot.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <samba-ntdom@samba.anu.edu.au>
Subject: RE: A question about NT Domains

Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton writes:
 > On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Jean-Francois Micouleau wrote:
 > 
 > > On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
 > > 
 > > > ah, then i need to explain better.  two or more users have identical
 > > > profiles.  say only one user installs a program which adds additional keys
 > > > into the registry.  those keys, as i understand it, will *not* be removed
 > > > from HKEY_LOCAL_USER when subsequent users log in.
 > > 
 > > under W95 or NT ?
 > 
 > my experience is with Win95, but i expect the same for NT, and have been
 > told that it is so by someone who runs NT admin training courses.
 >  
 > > and why do you want to have one profile shared between multiples users ?
 > 
 > you don't.  how did you get that impression?  i said multiple users with
 > identical profiles, not multiple users sharing one profile.

In my experience with both Win95 and NT, is that the HKEY_LOCAL_USER information
is stored in USER.dat or NTuser.DAT for NT.  ALL of this branch is in this file
and there is no overlap between any two users (Unless you have '95 set up
to use a single common profile).

[** lkcl: see jht's message for conditions under which an overlap can occur **]

The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE branch is machine based, and shared by all users of that
machine.


[And now for a whole stack of caveats]

1. User start menu paths are not stored in the registry (obviously) they're
   a directory structure that located by settings in HKEY_LOCAL_USER.

   If you want start menues / desktop / favorites to be individual to a user
   you must set up your user registry so these can be located individually.
   The easiest tool to manage this is the policy editor.
   
2. When you log onto 'Doze 95, it has to find the user registry.


   If you have specified a common profile, a "default user" USER.DAT is used.

   If you have specified individualised profiles, then USER.DAT will be found
   by the following formula:

        1. if NET USE x: /HOME was used at startup, try for x:\USER.DAT (where
           x: is any drive letter from A to Z.
           if no USER.DAT is found go to step 3

        2. if no home is specified in a mapping,
           ...\windows\profiles\username\USER.DAT is used. If no USER.DAT exists
           go to step 3.

        3. If neither of the previous two found a USER.DAT, then it will use
           a prototype USER.DAT which it will later save to the above specified
           path when the user logs out.

           The interesting thing here is that the prototype USER.DAT used here
           is actually a copy of the last USER.DAT used on this machine.  (This
           may be the effect that the original poster is seeing)

        4. As discussed above the start menu and desktop are specified in the
           registry contained within USER.DAT.  When a new USER.DAT is created
           from a prototype, new directories are created for the start menu and
           desktop ACCORDING TO HOW THE COPIED PROTOTYPE DEFINES THEM.

           So if the prototype USER.DAT says that start menu is in H:\Start Menu
           but programs folder is C:\windows\start menu\programs, then the
           H:\start menu will be created, and the existing machine programs
           folder used.

           This means that is is important when creating roving profiles to get
           your prototype USER.DAT and general user directory structure set up
           exactly as you want it, and then make a copy of it that you know will
           be safe from modification.  When creating a new user you then copy
           this prototype into the new user area, so that the new user doesn't
           just inherit what the previous user had.


3. When you log onto 'Doze NT, it has to find the user registry.


   NT is easier to see what's going on, but follows much the same rules as
   '95.  The big difference being that 'NT gets its profile location from
   the login server when it's logged in. (On an NT system have a look at user
   manager/user/profile - you will see that you can specify the user profile
   path) Under NT3.51 this profile path was a path to NTuser.DAT, on 4.0 this
   seems to be a path to a directory structure (haven't played with many NT4
   servers)

   I'm not sure how this works in samba, as I haven't yet tried the NT_DOM stuff
   yet (Luke: I assume you have a keyword for this?)

[lkcl: nt workstations should look in exactly the same places for things on
       samba or other SMB servers as they do on an NT server, as long as that
       SMB server looks like NT.  if anyone finds that something fails, alert
       us on samba-bugs@samba.anu.edu.au and we'll look into it].

   When an NT system find a user without a NTuser.DAT, it copies from a
   prototype that it stores especially for this purpose, so while unlike '95
   the user doesn't get whatever happened last on the machine, the user will
   get a fairly minimalist configuration.


4. There are a *LOT* of reasons that the 'doze machine might not find USER.DAT
   and therefore default to a prototype.

        1. Can't execute logon script & therefore no /HOME mapping (Most common)
           .Make sure the script exists
           .that you have your logon script set right
           .Netlogon share must exist
           .Protection/ownership of the script and share

        2. no /HOME mapping in the logon script

        3. no home path specified in /etc/smb.conf (Or no home mapping set
           up for that user in NT's user manager)

        4. Protection/ownership of the user directory

        5. protection/ownership of USER.DAT

        6. basic networking problems
           .Is the networking available (Test it by manually mapping
                to both the user share and netlogon share)
           .Was the networking working during logon ?

        7. Has it defaulted to a prototype, and then had you map the home
           directory afterwards ? - This will result in the bad prototype
           being written into the users home, and them being stuck with it,
           (Just replace USER.DAT again)


5. Interesting NOTE

        When '95 is performing the logon script, the HKEY_LOCAL_USERS has
        NOT been mapped from the USER.DAT. What has been mapped at this stage
        is the prototype registry (last one used).

        I assume the reason for this is that '95 is waiting for the logon
        script to complete so that it can identify where the user's home
        directory is.

        If at this point you attempt to do anything that uses the USER registry,
        (installing something for example or reading something from the user
        registry) you will actually be operating on the machine stored prototype
        profile not the user profile.  This means that nothing will realy
        happen to the user setup (No menu items, no settings etc).

        To get around this you can name a process in the "run once" entries in
        the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE branch, and these "run once" processes will be
        executed once the USER.DAT is loaded, and all the user directories are
        accessible.


To sum up:

        NET USE H: /HOME
        is the key to getting your user profiles loaded from a server.
        NET USE H: \\server\homes
        Won't get it right without a lot of stuffing about.
         
        Windoze '95 goes through a lot to bring you your user profile and
        if anything goes wrong during this process, it will drop back to
        using whatever profile was last used on the machine.
         

From samba@aquasoft.com.au Sat Apr 11 13:48:54 1998
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 09:34:08 +1000
From: Samba Bugs <samba@aquasoft.com.au>
To: Multiple recipients of list <samba-ntdom@samba.anu.edu.au>
Subject: Re: A question about NT Domains

Just for the sake of completeness I thought I'd add a bit to this.
Let's be clear about which files affect registry changes (or contents).

Under NT, open a command prompt interface:
cd %SystemRoot%\System32\config
dir

The standard registry files are:
        Default - all component default settings
        System - all HKLM\System entries
        Software - all HKLM\Software entries
        Security - Domain/Machine releated User Rights & Privs.
        SAM - the Security Access Manager database (ie:Passwords etc.)

These are used by EVERYTHING!!

When a user logs in the following files get checked:
        1) \\"Authenticating Server"\NETLOGON\NTConfig.Pol
        2) %SystemRoot%\Profiles\Policies\NTConfig.Pol
                this one is a copy of the last NTConfig.Pol downloaded
                from (1) above - if available.
        3) %SystemRoot%\Policies\%UserName%\NTUser.DAT

The later, is first obtained from a profile server if the User_Init_Info
passed from the Domain Logon Server specifies use of a roaming profile.
If item (3) does NOT exist and/or NO default profile is available one gets
created from the system default settings PLUS the last loaded file at item
(2) above.
 
The HKCU is always unique to the currently logged in user, BUT if the
currently logged in user is using a shared profile that has NOT been made
exclusive then on logout  the HKCU will be written over the top of the
source files. That is why Mandatory profiles are essential when sharing a
roaming profile.

On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, Wolfgang Ratzka wrote:

> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> 
> > my experience is with Win95, but i expect the same for NT, and have been
> > told that it is so by someone who runs NT admin training courses.
> 
> On NT it is quite definitely not so. HKCU will always be loaded completely from
> the user's NTuser.dat file and unloaded again after logout.
> In fact HKCU is not a proper registry hive but a symbolic reference to the subkey of
> HKEY_USERS that corresponds to the current user. If more than one user 
> is active on an NT machine (on plain vanilla NT this *is* possible if you have
> services running as a non-system user; on WinFrame or Hydra multiple users
> can be logged in) you will see several subkeys of HKU that correspond to
> the active users and don't interfere with each other.
> 
> Of course some settings that a user can change do not go into the HKCU hive
> but into HKLM, most notably the screen resolution and the number of colours
> (you can use policies to prevent user's from changing these).
> Some applications put information that should go into HKCU into HKLM instead.
> (Hall of Shame: Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Office 97 [User dictionaries!]...).
> Others just use plain good old INI files in their program directory or even 
> in \WINNT\SYSTEM32. Those changes will not be user specific but machine 
> specific and those programs will cause trouble, when one tries to run them
> on WinFrame or Hydra... :-).
> 
> Summarizing:
> 
> Q: Will the next user inherit a previous user's additions
>    to the HKCU registry hive?
> A: Quite definitely not.

Correct.

> 
> Q: Can a user foul up the configuration for the next user?
> A: Quite definitely yes!

See above. Yes, but not if correctly configured.

> 
> Q: Is this discussion out of place on the samba-ntdom list?
> A: Errr....

Errr... Really? I think it is. Do we, or do we not, want to help people to
gain stable and dependable use of samba?

> -- 
> Wolfgang Ratzka (dialing in from home)

Cheers,
John H Terpstra (Also from home!!!!)