Re: Offline files in a 2000 AD

From: Lanwench [MVP - Exchange] (lanwench_at_heybuddy.donotsendme.unsolicitedmail.atyahoo.com)
Date: 11/29/03 

Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 12:45:24 -0500

NP on multiposting - hope I didn't sound officious.

Re offline files - all I can tell you is that I have given up on them
entirely as I have found them to cause more problems than they purport to
resolve. If you manage to get it working, fantastic - for me, it's cheaper
for my clients to use software that really does what they want, as otherwise
they're paying me hourly to resolve problems, and that's gonna cost a heck
of a lot more than $29 per workstation or whatnot. Best of luck!

--LW

barnski wrote:
> Apologoes for the poor etiquette - first post here and I
> am in urgent need of getting this sorted. I now know
> better!
>
> In response to your reply, the third party software is
> probably not an option due to budget (I know it's not
> that expensive, but they're not that rich!), so I'll
> continue trying using policies / scripts.
>
> Any further help gratefully received,
>
> Barnski.
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> Hi - I replied in m.p.win2000.active_directory.- if you need to post
>> to multiple groups, it's best to do so all at once in a single
>> message (separate the NG names with commas) so that everyone can
>> follow the thread. Thanks :-)
>>
>> Crossposting = posting once to several newsgroups within a single
>> message. This is not a Bad Thing (presuming the list of groups
>> posted to is small, and all the groups are truly relevant to your
>> question)
>>
>> Multiposting = posting separate, identical posts to several
>> newsgroups. This is a Bad Thing.
>>
>> See http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
>>
>> wrote:
>>> I have some Windows XP laptop users who log into a Windows
>>> 2000 AD domain. My customer wants the XP laptop users to
>>> use offline files to make their home drive available when
>>> they are away from the office. Fair enough.
>>>
>>> The real problem is that the customer has recently
>>> introduced a new premises, which is in its own AD site,
>>> with its own DC. The link between the sites is slow (1MB,
>>> but quite well used), so they want laptop users visiting
>>> the new site to use their cached copies of their homedrives
>>> rather than hitting the WAN with file requests. Again, not
>>> an unreasonable request.
>>>
>>> My issue is that I cannot find any simple way of doing
>>> this. In a lab, the home drive is always mapped, no matter
>>> at which site the laptop is connected. I am aware that:
>>>
>>> 1 - There is a "slow link" detection process that *should*
>>> detect a slow link and not connect offline folders to the
>>> server, but this doesn't work properly
>>> (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en- us;811525)
>>>
>>> 2 - There is no Group Policy item in Windows 2000 AD that
>>> addresses this "slow link" parameter (although I believe it
>>> may exist in 2003), so I can't administer it from the AD
>>> even if it did work properly.
>>>
>>> 3 - There is a cmscmd command-line utility to force offline
>>> files to go offline, but this is only in XP (2000 Pro
>>> doesn't have it).
>>>
>>> My current plan is to use Group Policy applied at AD site
>>> level to run a login script that will call the cmscmd
>>> utility. I will use group policy filtering (modify the
>>> "Apply" rights on the GPO) so that only the appropriate
>>> users get it.
>>>
>>> I can't believe that this is such a complex issue - does
>>> anyone have a straightforward solution? Am I missing
>>> something obvious? Surely people must have wanted to do
>>> this before Windows 2003/XP?
>>>
>>> Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
>>>
>>> Barnski.
>>
>>
>> .