5.6 Roaming User Profile

Roaming User Profiles redirects user profiles to a file share so that users receive the same operating system and application settings on multiple computers. When a user signs in to a computer by using an account that is set up with a file share as the profile path, the user’s profile is downloaded to the local computer and merged with the local profile (if present). When the user signs out of the computer, the local copy of their profile, including any changes, is merged with the server copy of the profile. Roaming User Profiles is typically enabled on domain accounts by a network administrator.

File share path where profile is stored: Configure the profile path in Windows user properties as \\fs1.corp.contoso.com\User Profiles$\%username%\

NOTE:Do not forget to add backslash at the end of the profile path.

For more information, see Folder Redirection, Offline Files, and Roaming User Profiles overview.

Windows recommends to enable the use of separate profiles for each version of Windows. This means for each version of client a profile is stored on a different folder in the file share.

Operating System Version

Roaming User Profile Location

Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

\\<servername>\<fileshare>\<username>

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

\\<servername>\<fileshare>\<username>\.V2

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

\\<servername>\<fileshare>\<username>\.V2

Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012

\\<servername>\<fileshare>\<username>\.V3 (after the software update and registry key are applied

\\<servername>\<fileshare>\<username>\.V2 (before the software update and registry key are applied)

For more information, see Deploy Roaming User Profiles.

5.6.1 Configuration Required on OES Server for Roaming Profiles

In a pure Windows to Windows world a Windows client would automatically create a username.V<n> folder on Windows file server and assign rights to this folder for the user. However, in Windows to OES server environment, the client cannot automatically assign user rights on the folder. Therefore, the Administrator has to create a folder on a file share and assign rights on that folder for the corresponding user. For example,

rights -a -f /media/nss/<volume>/<home>/<user> -r all trustee <AD_domain>\\user

Recommendation:

Administrator creating and assigning rights to each version folder might be a repetitive task, this can be simplified by adding a backslash "\" to the profile path in user properties as follows:

\\fs1.corp.contoso.com\User Profiles$\%username%\

Add user rights as follows:

rights -a -f /media/nss/<volume>/<folder>/<user> -r all trustee <AD_domain>\\user

This will in turn allow the Windows clients to create separate folder for each version of the client inside the file share like this

/media/nss/<volume>/<folder>/<user>/.V2
/media/nss/<volume>/<folder>/<user>/.V3

For more information about assigning rights, see rights in the OES 2023: NSS File System Administration Guide for Linux.