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Do you use Google Chrome on your curriculum computers?


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Posted
From my login script.

 

mklink /h "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\bookmarks" "s:\favourites\chrome\bookmarks"
mklink /h "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\bookmarks.bak" "s:\favourites\chrome\bookmarks.bak"

 

Just a logon BAT script?

 

EDIT: that's weird... I can't see the "From my login script" on the page but it's in the quote. I'll give that a go. Cheers!

Posted
From my login script (I don't actually use this now, as I patched chromium in source to 'do the right thing').

 

mklink /h "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\bookmarks" "s:\favourites\chrome\bookmarks"
mklink /h "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\bookmarks.bak" "s:\favourites\chrome\bookmarks.bak"

 

Just tried this on my machine to test it and it said Local NTFS volumes are rquired to complete the operation

Posted
You need local admin and the machine needs to be running vista or better. NTFS on XP machines can't hardlink across network volumes.
Posted
You need local admin and the machine needs to be running vista or better. NTFS on XP machines can't hardlink across network volumes.

 

I think Vista and 7 can using reparse points.

Posted
NTFS on XP machines can't hardlink across network volumes.

Unofficially you can.

 

Symbolic links for Windows XP

Technically it seems that NTFS5 even shipped with Windows XP has always supported symbolic links, but the functionality was not available for user mode applications, and even not for the upper layers of ntfs.sys

 

BUT: There are filter drivers available from Masatoshi Kimura for even WindowsXP, which enable symbolic links under XP. These drivers can be downloaded from his home page for 64 bit and for 32 bit. The sources are also available.

 

Installation of these drivers is also quite simple.

 

  • Unpack the archive for your platform,
  • Start the driver via executing 'senable.exe install' from the command prompt.

If you want to stop the driver, execute from a command prompt 'senable.exe delete'.

 

After an reboot make sure that at system startup senable is started once, so that the driver is loaded. (Source)

Posted
As opposed to no flash at all?

For a lot of schools, Flash is a necessary evil unfortunately. :(

 

I suppose it depends on which websites you visit.

Posted
Do you use Google Chrome on your curriculum computers?

 

Yes - our 32 original-model Eee PCs all boot Debian and load up Chrome in kiosk mode, we use them in the year 1 classrooms.

Posted (edited)
Just testing it at the moment to push it out, but I won't set it as default, because I can't get bl%%dy favourites to follow people around, it insists on storing them locally. The only way around it, as far as I can see, is to let people use Google Sync, but I'm not going down the path of explaining how to do that.

 

I just started testing today, and if I understand you correctly, I have history/favourites/settings following users around via the GPO setting: Set User Data Directory. I have found that it doesn't like multiple logons from the same user, though - if someone's got chrome open on one computer, leaves it, and logs in on another then tries to open Chrome, it won't open. If you close Chrome on one, the other will open etc. It makes sense, though, and I'm not sure how much of a problem this will be.

 

If anyone has a solution I'm all ears.

Edited by Driftingashore
Posted
I just started testing today, and if I understand you correctly, I have history/favourites/settings following users around via the GPO setting: Set User Data Directory. I have found that it doesn't like multiple logons from the same user, though - if someone's got chrome open on one computer, leaves it, and logs in on another then tries to open Chrome, it won't open. If you close Chrome on one, the other will open etc. It makes sense, though, and I'm not sure how much of a problem this will be.

 

If anyone has a solution I'm all ears.

 

As soon as I set that GPO I got errors on opening Chrome so I quickly abandoned it. Can't recall what they were but it wasn't pretty.

Posted

Did you set them to google's own environment vars? It uses nonstandard ones, for some odd reason:

 

%APPDATA% = ${roaming_app_data}

%LOCALAPPDATA% = ${local_app_data}

%USERNAME% = ${user_name}

%COMPUTERNAME% = ${machine_name}

%USERPROFILE% = ${profile}

%PROGRAMFILES% = ${program_files}

%WINDIR% = ${windows}

${documents} = The “Documents” folder for the current user. (“C:\Users\Administrator\Documents”)

${global_app_data} = The system AppData folder. (“C:\ProgramData”)

 

(from Deploy Google Chrome)

 

If you did, I have no answers, though.

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Posted (edited)
For a lot of schools, Flash is a necessary evil unfortunately. :(

 

I suppose it depends on which websites you visit.

 

I've also banned Java on my clients while I was at it. :)

 

I think Vista and 7 can using reparse points.

 

You can only use reparse points for directories.

Edited by Geoff
Posted (edited)

Off topic, but:

 

I've also banned Java on my clients while I was at it. :)

 

Last week I totally removed Java from our network. The only complaint so far: "Why isn't Minecraft working anymore?"

 

Can't say I'm too bothered about that..

Edited by Driftingashore
Posted
Did you set them to google's own environment vars? It uses nonstandard ones, for some odd reason:

 

%APPDATA% = ${roaming_app_data}

%LOCALAPPDATA% = ${local_app_data}

%USERNAME% = ${user_name}

%COMPUTERNAME% = ${machine_name}

%USERPROFILE% = ${profile}

%PROGRAMFILES% = ${program_files}

%WINDIR% = ${windows}

${documents} = The “Documents” folder for the current user. (“C:\Users\Administrator\Documents”)

${global_app_data} = The system AppData folder. (“C:\ProgramData”)

 

(from Deploy Google Chrome)

 

If you did, I have no answers, though.

 

I'd been trying to use the user's mapped home drive, which it obviously didn't like... using ${documents}\Favourites\Chrome didn't get very far either, but ${roaming_app_data} seems to work - even if it puts Favourites back into the roaming profile, where I'd just got them out of with IE. Better than nothing, still. Cheers!

Posted
I'd been trying to use the user's mapped home drive, which it obviously didn't like... using ${documents}\Favourites\Chrome didn't get very far either, but ${roaming_app_data} seems to work - even if it puts Favourites back into the roaming profile, where I'd just got them out of with IE. Better than nothing, still. Cheers!

 

Out of curiosity, are you (or is anyone) getting any errors on Win 7 installs? My sole problem with Chrome is now an error message on startup - "A breakpoint has been reached 0x80000003" -on Win 7 machines, but the browser continues to function regardless of the error. It's just very annoying. Vista and XP work fine, though.

Posted
Out of curiosity, are you (or is anyone) getting any errors on Win 7 installs? My sole problem with Chrome is now an error message on startup - "A breakpoint has been reached 0x80000003" -on Win 7 machines, but the browser continues to function regardless of the error. It's just very annoying. Vista and XP work fine, though.

 

That was the error I had when trying to use ${documents} - not sure if the code was the same, but the breakpoint waffle and the behaviour were identical. Changing to ${roaming...} made it go away.

Posted (edited)

Curious, as I'm using ${roaming_app_data}. I have to admit to being quite disappointed that it's not working for me on Win 7, but is on XP, considering I was planning to finally remove XP from the network this weekend and roll out Chrome. Bloody typical.

 

I suppose I'll try to find a location that doesn't complain tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

Edited by Driftingashore
Posted

Okay, for anyone that has this issue: after a bit of research, I found this: Issue 84045 - chromium - Investigate profile/cache on a network hosted location - An open-source browser project to help move the web forward. - Google Project Hosting

 

The interesting bits are near the bottom (search for --disable-gpu)

 

Long story short, this is a bug to do with the GPU sandboxing, and they're working on/investigating a fix. The current workaround involves launching Chrome with the --disable-gpu flag, which disables GPU acceleration. Far from ideal, but it seems to work. I suppose I'll have to wait for a Chrome update for a "real" fix.

Posted
I used to support Firefox as part of our base image a while back, but eventually removed it due to it being a PITA as to manage. With every update it was getting harder and harder to turn off nag messages and the import utility. Students don't have persistent profiles so this stuff would pop up every time they logged in. I gave Chrome a try last year and got disgusted with the tweaks I had to make just trying to get the MSI to deploy through AD. It was a while ago, but I do remember that the installer was trying to call home back to Google, but couldn't get out since all traffic needs to go through authenticating proxy filters before being let out. As a result, the machines were stuck on the deploying managed software message. It wouldn't even time out and eventually continue, they were just stuck. I found a tweak on some webpage I had to make to the package to get it to work and eventually it did push out alright. It's just crap like this that turns me off from supporting alternative web browsers. We're a Windows 7 Enterprise district now and IE9 is all that we support. Teachers have local admin on their machines and can install whatever they like, but the base image and student computers only get IE9. It works, I rarely see websites break on it, and GPO just works.
Posted
I used to support Firefox as part of our base image a while back, but eventually removed it due to it being a PITA as to manage.

 

Don't say that...

 

I'm about to sort out firefox for our network.

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