Folder Redirection to limit profile size

[arakan94]

My users tend to store lot of things on Desktop and in User Shell folders (documents, etc.). For backup reasons, I have roaming profiles enabled so all these files are saved on server as well.

Problem is that these profiles often have size of several gigabytes and the log in and log out times are very long (minutes, sometimes even more than 10 minutes). I wanted to do Folder redirection of large folders to their home shares as per https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Configuring_Windows_Profile_Folder_Redirections. Sadly, this does not work well on my Windows 10 clients. Values in registry get changed to correct ones, but doesn't really work. Some folders (desktop and AppData) did get redirected, but clicking on Documents in Explorer still lead to old C:\Users\xx\Documents location.

Any experiences/tips on what to do about this? Feel free to offer different solution than Folder redirection. Thanks.

[arakan94]

No one?   

[doncamilo]

 

Windows 10 roaming profiles has lots of issues. It isn't a Samba4 problem (Some Windows Server seems to have this problem too).

If you enables roaming profiles only as consequence of  backup reasons, I think that you could simply disable roaming profiles as far as you would need to configure a system backup able to manage the local folders of the user on each one of the client machines, isn't it?.

I'll try to configure a folder redirection and I will give you my results in a few days.

Cheers!

[arakan94]

Windows 10 roaming profiles has lots of issues. It isn't a Samba4 problem (Some Windows Server seems to have this problem too).

If you enables roaming profiles only as consequence of  backup reasons, I think that you could simply disable roaming profiles as far as you would need to configure a system backup able to manage the local folders of the user on each one of the client machines, isn't it?.

I'll try to configure a folder redirection and I will give you my results in a few days.

Cheers!

How did it go?

As for the reason, it's also handy that users have same setting and stuff across different machines. The policy is to use network share for storing stuff but you know how well users actually follow instructions..

[basselope]

Just a quick note: keeping a lot of documents on the desktop is a very dangerous habit.

Apart from the sync + roaming profiles issue, the documents can get often damaged and lost in case of profile corruption (and slow logins/logouts may cause corruption if the user does not wait for the process to complete correctly).

One workaround that I have used for my users is creating links on the desktop to some local folder elsewhere: if they save stuff using that "desktop folder" they are actually saving in C:/Documents or other, or on the file server if they are not supposed to save on the local disk.

[arakan94]

Just a quick note: keeping a lot of documents on the desktop is a very dangerous habit.

Apart from the sync + roaming profiles issue, the documents can get often damaged and lost in case of profile corruption (and slow logins/logouts may cause corruption if the user does not wait for the process to complete correctly).

One workaround that I have used for my users is creating links on the desktop to some local folder elsewhere: if they save stuff using that "desktop folder" they are actually saving in C:/Documents or other, or on the file server if they are not supposed to save on the local disk.

Yeah, I did that for principal - moved stuff to network drive and created links.. She doesn't care as long as the links have same names as the folders

But it's not a permanent, automatic solution..

[spravce]

Hi,
every user has an H:/ folder. It is /home/<username> on zentyal server.

Create here folders "DocumentsL, "Desktop" e.t.c  ( /home/<username>/Doduments )

Go to workstation, log as user. Open <username> folder.

Change location of folder Documents  to H:/Documents    https://www.dummies.com/computers/operating-systems/windows-10/how-to-change-the-location-of-user-folders-in-windows-10/

Desktop, Music, Picturesm, Downloads  ... also, if you wanna


You must select "Move files" as last step. It will maybe take lot of time, but avoids inconsistence. Maybe you find better way.

disable or restrict offline files https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/122727-enable-disable-offline-files-windows.html

This change appears on all computers  where user later log on

logout.