Folder Redirection - point of despair :( :( [PICS]

[psydii]

Ok excellent. To answer your queries:a

 

* what do you see if you issue 'net view \\fs1 Nothing seems to happen, run line closes.

* what do you see if you issue 'net use' Nothing seems to happen, run line closes.

 

open a cmd window and issue the comands from there (without the ' ')

 

* what folder structure you see within their home folder? (YES that was exactly what I meant)

 

Is profile roaming actually working? (looks like it is from that info, but best to have a quick check in the application event log)

 

Are any folders excluded, if so, which ones? (By this I mean it is possible to exclude the 'well known' folders from roaming, this is often done on the Documents folder to improve raoming logon performance. Without folder redirection it mean that anything saved to that folder remains in the local copy of the user profile and is never copied back up to the server. It is controlled through group policies: "User Configuration-Policies-Administrative Tempates-Network-User Profiles")

 

 

What setting do you use to map your home folder on the client machine? It's set in AD as W: - is this what you mean? yes

Do you have any scripted/reg tweaked folder redirections going on? Got some brutal mods to the Libraries. WRITE UP IS HERE Excellent. I'll read it as soon as I've done the paperwork I'm supposed to be doing. It will probably teach me a thing or two. After training the whole school how they work, i've always left well alone

Where are the following special folders actually pointing to when a user is logged on? YEs, so if they go into Documents or Pictures in explorer where is the physical folder that they are viewing?

 

By the look of it you are asking RUP and Folder redirection to do quite a bit of work the first time a user logs on with the new settings. I would definitely advocate applying the latest user profile, csc, tcpip etc. hotfixes as there were some horrible bugs in the sp1 release.

Edited August 15, 2012 by psydii

[plexer]

Surely for folder redirection to work as expected windows needs to be able to connect to a unc that fully connects to a users home folder??? such as \\fs1\home\jbloggs

 

Ben

[psydii]

Surely for folder redirection to work as expected windows needs to be able to connect to a unc that fully connects to a users home folder??? such as \\fs1\home\jbloggs

 

Ben

 

the HOMES share as presented by SAMBA is dynamic it presents the home folder of the user who is connected. (actually it is supposed to dynamically create the %username% share but that doesn't appear to be how it is working in this case.)

 

Folder redirection CAN be configured to put the username to be in the path, but it is not compulsory. Thus if HOMES is dynamic depending on the user connecting then 'redirect to following location' set to \\serverfqdn\homes\FolderName should do the trick.

I suspect some reworking of the folder structure is going to be required to get this working neatly. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

[Miscbrah]

Ooh hang on, just had it work ok with two separate users! Think I may have it, will write it up if so!!

[Miscbrah]

Beh, sorry no updates yet. Gotta concentrate on something else for the time being.

[Miscbrah]

DAMMIT!!!

 

No still not working. When I get back MOnday I'll resume the troubleshooting.

 

Oh hell WHY won't this just WORK????

[Miscbrah]

Ok excellent. To answer your queries:a

 

* what do you see if you issue 'net view \\fs1 Nothing seems to happen, run line closes.

* what do you see if you issue 'net use' Nothing seems to happen, run line closes.

 

open a cmd window and issue the comands from there (without the ' ')

 

* what folder structure you see within their home folder? (YES that was exactly what I meant)

 

Is profile roaming actually working? (looks like it is from that info, but best to have a quick check in the application event log)

 

Are any folders excluded, if so, which ones? (By this I mean it is possible to exclude the 'well known' folders from roaming, this is often done on the Documents folder to improve raoming logon performance. Without folder redirection it mean that anything saved to that folder remains in the local copy of the user profile and is never copied back up to the server. It is controlled through group policies: "User Configuration-Policies-Administrative Tempates-Network-User Profiles")

 

 

What setting do you use to map your home folder on the client machine? It's set in AD as W: - is this what you mean? yes

Do you have any scripted/reg tweaked folder redirections going on? Got some brutal mods to the Libraries. WRITE UP IS HERE Excellent. I'll read it as soon as I've done the paperwork I'm supposed to be doing. It will probably teach me a thing or two. After training the whole school how they work, i've always left well alone

Where are the following special folders actually pointing to when a user is logged on? YEs, so if they go into Documents or Pictures in explorer where is the physical folder that they are viewing?

 

By the look of it you are asking RUP and Folder redirection to do quite a bit of work the first time a user logs on with the new settings. I would definitely advocate applying the latest user profile, csc, tcpip etc. hotfixes as there were some horrible bugs in the sp1 release.

 

Okay, right. Getting back to this, thanks so much for the help. I'll apply the fixes as far as I can and report back.

 

No folders are excluded as above.

 

If I click on a folder that's redirected successfully by going to the users' folder in windows explorer, if it's worked it'll show the correct path, and if not it'll be the c:\users path.

 

Also worth noting that, while in there, I've got LOTS of one kind of folder (eg there'll be half a dozen 'Favourites' folders in there all pointing to the same place...) I'm guessing this is a hangover from ticking the 'Leave contents when policy is removed' during experiments...

 

Oh and I NOW HAVE A UNC PATH with %username% in it

[Miscbrah]

Right, not sure any of the patches on the second page resemble problems I'm having.

 

I'm no further along.

 

Anything else I might try?

[karldenton]

I managed to do this ok yesterday. In mine, rather than selecting the path to redirect to, there was an option to "Redirect to users home folder". I selected that and tested it ok

[Miscbrah]

Heh, I'm jealous.

[Miscbrah]

I've had to admit defeat.

 

This one's bigger than me, got no idea where to go for help as everyone else just ticks the box and it works.

 

Gonna be a shameful call to the local authority helpdesk, and a gritty phone skirmish with Microsoft.

 

AS SOON as I get an answer or a solution I'll post it, just in case any future Googlers are in the same boat.

Edited August 21, 2012 by Miscbrah

[Willott]

What folders do you see in a /home/staff/username/home folder? Are there any My Pictures or Pictures folders/files in there? What permissions are on them if they are there?

[Miscbrah]

Hi - it'll vary depending on what HAS redirected properly that time or a previous time, and had folder redirection create the folders OR what folders were in there before which I'm guessing it can't redirect to if they're already in there with names it'd automatically set them up as.

 

Not much help really, so the answer is 'could be anything' but if there's a particular situation I need to look at or if you've something in mind then I can check specific things out! Problem is the file servers with the home areas on them are Linux, and a world of mystery to me.

[Miscbrah]

Also, if anyone finds this from Google, a thread here offers a promising development for a workaroud.

 

 

...And just thinking aloud here, but I know folder redirection happens fairly early on in the logon process, which is why you can't redirect to a mapped drive (eg W: ) and thus the necessity of a UNC path in Group Policy OR a %homeshare%\folder or %homeshare%%homepath% set.

 

I was wondering if it were possible to script the redirection, and set that policy to run VERY VERY late in the Policy link order for the OU of the user (that's in Gorup Policy, click on the OU in case you've never seen that one.)

 

Because if THAT would run I could try to create a folder called Redirect Documents in the user's home area in Group Policy, by setting the regular poilcy up, steering to %homeshare%\Redirect Documents (thinking being NOBODY will have a folder called that in there, so no problems with it hitting one and freaking out) and JUST keeping that in. In testing, this has proved reliable as at the very least THAT works. After THAT'S done it's business, I can apply the registry redirection, pointing THE WHOLE LOT into W:\Redirect Documents and all should be rosy. Can even get the script to run "net use W: \\pathtothehomearea" FIRST so the sod's DEFINITELY there before I go, and THEN run the script in the thread linked at the top of this post.

 

...The shonkiest workaround in the history of Windows, but would it work I wonder? I'll ****ing take ANYTHING that does tbh...

Edited August 21, 2012 by Miscbrah

[psydii]

Right, not sure any of the patches on the second page resemble problems I'm having.

 

I'm no further along.

 

Anything else I might try?

 

|t doesn't matter. Those are (well they were until last week) the latest version of the components that are faulty. Install them.

[psydii]

Problem is the file servers with the home areas on them are Linux, and a world of mystery to me.

 

You also need to solve this problem. Probably as the first thing you do after installing and testing the hotfixes.

[Miscbrah]

|t doesn't matter. Those are (well they were until last week) the latest version of the components that are faulty. Install them.

 

Understood. And thanks for your help psydii you're rapidly becoming a legend in my eyes. I'll get clearance from the boss and get patching. Do I (at the risk of sounding silly now) need to run every single patch linked in those four links you posted on the second page? Just so I'm clear; I'll get my patching finger a-clicking tomorrow if so.

[psydii]

That is the easiest way to ensure you've got the necessary components, not all of the later patches contain all the files from the earlier ones, and sometimes they switch from GDR to LDR or vice versa, so best (unfortunately) to apply them sequentially (by KB number).

 

For performance reasons, while you are installing them on your test machine(s), disable the AV on access scanner and also System Restore. (20 minutes if you do, over an hour if you don't).

 

Don't forget to re-enable at least your AV before you begin testing or surfing the web from them!

 

That said, if you haven;t already, try testing without av running on a stock machine - some older AV products have been known to get tripped up by CSC etc.

 

Thanks for the complement, but for me this is a case of everything looking like a nail, when all you've got is a hammer (hammer=the hotfixes).

 

Keep us posted.

[psydii]

Meanwhile... Two questions:

 

What path do you see if you browse to Libraries->Documents->My Documents then click once in the location bar:

* On a client machine configured as before you started making the changes,

 

* On a client machine configured with folder redirection that is working.

 

what is the output of the following command typed in a cmd window running in the context of a standard staff user account:

net use

 

How about the command

net view \\fs1

assuming fs1 is the netbios name of your fileserver?

[maniac]

Have you exaimned any potential logs on the server to see if anything is happening at that end when Windows trys to redirect the folders?

 

What does it return to you if you type "echo %homepath%" in command prompt when logged on as a user?

 

If I'm reading this correctly then your linux server does something weird to the home drive mapping which might well work for the actual my documents folder, but could cause hassle for folder redirection. Can you turn this feature off and use normal full UNC paths instead of relying on that to do it's job, windows clearly isn't expecting this and although it should appear transparent there's obviously a problem somewhere.

 

Folder redirection has always been a piece of cake everytime I've implemented it, it's just worked and that's on 3 separeate windows 7 based networks now, no hassle with any of them by using the "%homepath%\folder" option for the redirection.

 

Mike.

[Miscbrah]

Hi guys, still ongoing - unfortunately other issues have taken me away, but just wanted to say I'm incredibly grateful everyone's come out to help me here.

 

In lieu of fixing this properly, does anyone know of a way to just restrict browsing and saving to the local profile or any of its subfolders? If I could just turn that OFF it'd be alright as my Libraries redirect fine, and that'd be enough to get going at least...

 

Anyway to do that bit?

 

And anyone got any Eduhobnobs it's been a miserable old summer