Roaming Profiles

[popotech]

hey,

i am going to network a building with an as400, i am not sure on a couple of things though. what is the difference between roaming profiles and local profiles, other than being stored locally.

i understand the concept of a person can logon anywhere in a building and basically see his/her desktop from all the copmuters with his/her login.

i understand that you set up a profile folder on the server ex. //server/profile/%user% and as soon as you logon to the win2k pro it goes to the server and get the users profile.

this is what i don't understand, the company doesn't have the money to buy a server so i have to network the (74 nodes) pc's to the AS400 but i want to know how do i direct the logon to pull from the server(as400) instead of the win2k server *which doesn't exist*. is this the beauty of win2k pro in that without having the win2k server that it is not possible to pull user profiles from the AS400 because the Win2k pro pc won't allow you to pull from any other place but locally. when no win2k server is detected?

thanks for any responses

 

[trimelater]

Roaming profile follows the end user personal setting to any computer.

What I think you can do is use one computer for roaming profile. Such as your W2K Professional. I would create a share file on the W2k Pro and then do something like \\w2kPro\Profiles.

I just thought a problem you may run into. Crap, I don't know if you can add user profiles in AS400. I hope someone else can help you.

If you are getting authenticated through NT 4.0, then the method above should work. Just add the profile where you created the logon name


Trimelater

 

[brontosaurus]

yeah, the question is how are your users getting authenticated? Do you have any type of Windows server/domain structure? If not, you'll have no way of applying roaming profile settings.

 

[popotech]

i am not using any other domain/server i just have the 75 win2k pro pc's. is there any way to set up users where they log onto the pc and there user name goes to the AS400 and pulls out their setting file?

for the previous post to bronto, if i set up one of our pc's "dell optiplex with 1.2 processor, 20 gig harddrive" with the win2k server software will it handle the roaming profiles?

thanks

 

[trimelater]

Your response to bronto will enable you to having roaming profile to work only if you have the Windows server. Bronto is correct, no sort of W2k or NT.40 will not let you use roaming profile.

By the way, are you sure you want to setup roaming profiles, they have cause me so much trouble because a lot of my computer on my LAN has so many different programs on each computer.



Trimelater

 

[popotech]

not to worried cause all the pc's will have the same prog. on all of them.

 

[trimelater]

What is your plan? Are you going to installed w2k?


Trimelater

 

[popotech]

OK, i'll take you from start to finish.....

-We recieved 70 Dell Optiplex Pc's w/ Win2k Pro OS
-We wanted to set something up where it wouldn't be stored locally but centrally as to persons desktop, my documents basically setting
-We were going to purchase a Server with win2k server OS but ran out of money
-So now we want to try and set up all the user profiles on our AS400

i know .......... we're &*^&ed

let me know if you have any ideas
thanks again
popotech

 

[jrjuiliano]

Unless you have some of the more killer software on the AS/400 you aren't going to get much out of it with your Windows machines.

If you want roaming profiles you might want to look into getting a Samba server set up with Linux. Pretty (relatively) easy to do and is very stable.

http://www.samba.org.

Of course you need a computer set up as a samba server, and a little patience. If you want you can also set up a DNS server with BIND and DHCP as well.

What else do you use the AS/400 for? Does it house a particular application and data? Do you use software emulation or is it for hosting web pages? You "could" use the AS/400 as a DNS and DHCP server, but to be honest I've never configured it, as I have our Win 2000 server doing all of this. I'm sure that it is basically the same as a BIND setup, but like I said I'm not sure. J.R. Juiliano
Information Systems Specialist
Tri-City Emergency Medical Group

 

[popotech]

was i right in how i described roaming profiles and that without the win2k server software it would be unreachable with our as400?

 

[jrjuiliano]

You were pretty much right about the roaming profiles. The differnce is that it is not necessarily Win2k Server that you would need to *have* roaming profiles.

You only need something that you log into and authenticate in order to get the correct profile. You could use Samba, Win2K server or even an NT4 (with the latest service packs) to do the job. The idea is that you are authenticating yourself when you log on, and the server will get you the correct profile.

The real benefit for Windows 2000 server is the use of Active Directory. Everything else can be copied even if for a short time.

The only problem with using the AS/400 is authenticating from the logon screens. Normally (for me, anyway as this is how we do it) we log into the Windows domain and then use emulation software to log into the AS/400 to access our application -- specific to the AS/400. J.R. Juiliano
Information Systems Specialist
Tri-City Emergency Medical Group

 

[GlenJohnson]

I've been told by my AS400 guru that you can possibly run windows 2000 server software on a partition on your as400. We aren't quite sure how this would need to be configured, but you might want to post your problem on the as-400 forum and ask around there. Remember, the key word is POSSIBLY Good luck. Glen A. Johnson
Microsoft Certified Professional
glen@nellsgiftbox.com

"Take nothing on its looks: take everything on evidence. There's no better rule."
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