Thanks for your response Marty & Glenn,

This KB looks like it should tackle this issue. Windows can't synchronize files into the cache for a share that essentially doesn't exist -- the share is only accessible when authenticated as that particular user. But not sure if it's practical to stamp primary SIDs on the desktops ... the users are relatively mobile.

I'm far from a strong Windows admin (Unix background) so this is a bit of learning for me.

I may suggest to create a top-level share, homedirs$ and reference each user's directory as \filer\homedir$%username% instead of \filer%username% (using the CIFS.HOMEDIR functionality). That way the share always exists ... and Windows can blindly sychronize stuff that doesn't need to be. :-D

C

Christopher Mende Systems Engineer

Infinity Solutions Ltd P O Box 3323, Auckland Ph: +64 9 921 8039, Mob: +64 21 227 7590 Fax: +64 9 309 4142 www.infinitysolutions.co.nz

-----Original Message----- From: Marty Wise [mailto:Marty.Wise@jlab.org] Sent: Thursday, 10 August 2006 11:10 p.m. To: Christopher Mende; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: CIFS homedir offline file synchronization

Chris,

I am not familiar with the error masking behavior you describe, but I

have

done some tinkering with this issue from another perspective.

Apparently, Windows uses a global offline file cache on a system. A synchronization event will trigger a synchronization of files for all users by default. This is made even more annoying by various files which

cannot

be synchronized (MS Access files among others) that generate errors

during

the synchronization attempt. In our specific situation, it is users who

only

occasionally log in to a system (mostly admins and support folks) that

get

synchronized needlessly during sync events triggered by the real user

of

the system. A bit of digging revealed that Windows provides controls that alleviates much of this problem for us.

There are registry entries (that can be set via group policy) that

allow

you to specify a list of "Primary" users of a system for offline files

(other

entries allow you to ignore specific file extensions during synchronization). Offline files uses the list of primary users to

attempt

synchronization of only files for those users. In our case, this

avoids

synchronizing files for our admins, etc. The configuration is

described in

MS KnowledgeBase article ID # 811660. (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811660)

I'm not sure if this is useful in your situation.

Regards,

Marty Wise Computer Center, Windows Systems Team Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility 12000 Jefferson Ave. Newport News, VA, 23606

---

From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com

[mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com]

On Behalf Of Christopher Mende Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 12:49 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: CIFS homedir offline file synchronization

Hi All,

Anyone run into issues with offline file synchronization for homedirs?

Have an issue where user1 logs in and out, and sync works just fine.

User 2 logs in and out & syncs, plus it tries to sync user1 again,

which

fails.

According to M$, if you were using one of their servers, the share permissions on the user share would be set to Full Control, and

Windows

would actually mask the failure.

Seems this isn't happening when using the filer - any ideas short of scrapping the auto-homedir feature? How does one change the share permissions on these auto-gen'd shares which aren't accessible via traditional methods? If that's really the fix.

Christopher Mende

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