Folder Redirect with offline files.

Hey,

I'm Stuck!

I'm trying to work out the best way to use Folder Redirect cross Laptops and Desktops but only have offline files on laptops and not on the desktops.

Hope not makes sense!

Sam

Hi

Simplest way would be to have seperate OU's for the laptops and computers and then apply the policies to each OU.

Sukh

The best and only stable way to do this is to set the administravly offline files up under the GPO applied to the users then disable the Offline Files feature in the GPO that applies to your workstations.

This will mean that initial syncs will be tied to the user preventing nasty permission error messages in the sync logs and it will still keep offline files off your workstations.

or set users policy to deny all syncing (bear with me) then use loopback grocessing to turn it back on on the requierd pcs (again has issues but what dosent like when i logged on as an admin it tried to sync the entire users$ folder and for sopme odd reason when my test user logged on it synced my hidden lexia share from another server for some odd reason)

Yea, you have to be careful where you put your policies, my admin stuff is only under default GPO so is not affected by policies lower down the chain. It comes down to your setup and preference in the end.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sted

or set users policy to deny all syncing (bear with me) then use loopback grocessing to turn it back on on the requierd pcs (again has issues but what dosent like when i logged on as an admin it tried to sync the entire users$ folder and for sopme odd reason when my test user logged on it synced my hidden lexia share from another server for some odd reason)

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99.9999999% of the time Group Policy Loopback is a bad idea, as is using any sort of 'deny' on an ACL.

so what happens if i turn off all ofline folder settings on pcs (except on 1 ou) and turn it on for users will it not work on the pcs with the settings set to off and work with the pcs set to on?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sted

so what happens if i turn off all ofline folder settings on pcs (except on 1 ou) and turn it on for users will it not work on the pcs with the settings set to off and work with the pcs set to on?

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Yes if you disable offline files in machine GPO, machine policy will override user policy in this case. If you don't configure it in machine policy it will happily try to sync everything. Workstations should have it disabled in GPO anyway as it can cause issues by auto caching stuff anyway.

We have implemented it as follows.

Offline Files Disabled for PC's
OFfline Files Enabled for Laptops.

In our case the Laptops and Desktops are in seperate OU's so there is a policy applied on each.

If you have all of your machines in a container, you can create a computer group in AD called "Offline Files Machines" or something, and apply the GPO to the container, remove "Authenticated Users" and add "Offline Files Machines" only machines in the group specified will pick up the policy.

Its also a lot tidier.

Simon

back to my test vm then lol
out of curiosity how do you limit what they can sync as i only want their user area synced

Just need to set the disable user configuration of offline files and also hide the make avalible offline bits in GPO then they will only be able to get the administrativly applied stuff.

so something like the below should be right then
Attachment 9803