NT Roaming Profile on Netware server

First let me state that the problem you are having is very common...and it is not a problem with the Novell Client (this is the normal assessment). There are a couple of questions I have though.
-How many users do you have on your network using roaming profiles
-What kind of Network connectivity do you have (hubs, switches 10Mb, 100Mb)for these users.
-What kind of environment do you have....i.e. Do your users normally move around to different machines on a regular basis
-What Service Pack version are you running on your Windows NT 4.0 Machines
-What version of ZenWorks are you running

These are very crucial questions as one of the things that the Novell documentation omits is "best practices for roaming profiles" Roaming profiles can only be used in certain senarios. Note that the roaming profiles feature is a Microsoft thing that the Novell client software is taking advantage of.

forrestt, here are the following answers to your questions:

About 150 users distributed between 2 locations (about 75 at each location). There is one 3com 10/100 switch at each location and from those switches are five 3com hubs. Each station has a realitively newly wired 10/100 connection to the hub and biscuit.

Most users rarely roam to a different workstation or location.

The NT4 users are at SP5 or 6. There are also Win2000 workstations and I believe they are pretty much patched to the latest.

No workstations (except for mine on test) are on ZenWorks.

If no one is on Zenworks how are you implementing Roaming Profiles?. Also What Novell Client version are you using and what version of Zen.

Is it possible that the workstation is looking for the profile before the drive is mapped (or are you using unc?) and the user is authenticated, since it seems that you are using only microsoft:s workstationthings to get your roaming profiles.  

forrestt, I could be remiss, but, what does ZEN have to do with anything? We are implementing roaming profiles as if we would if we didn't have any Netware servers (e.g. NT server directories) and directing the profile to be stored on a mapped netware directory that all users have read/write privaleges.

Well to implement roaming profiles on windows nt machines running the Novell Client for NT...(I am assuming that you are running the Novell Client...are you???) You typically need the Workstation Manager component of the client to be installed. For this component to work you need the schema extentions added by Zenworks or the client will have problems finding the profile directory upon login. If you do a quick packet capture of a typical login seesion where you are trying to do roaming profiles you will see what I am talking about.

Well to implement roaming profiles on windows nt machines running the Novell Client for NT...(I am assuming that you are running the Novell Client...are you???) You typically need the Workstation Manager component of the client to be installed. For this component to work you need the schema extentions added by Zenworks or the client will have problems finding the profile directory upon login. If you do a quick packet capture of a typical login seesion where you are trying to do roaming profiles you will see what I am talking about.

Have you read the links I posted ?

Yes, pwoolford. I even printed out the instructions and tried to follow them. I got hung up on the following (which I believe it step 1c):

        c.Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > Network > Services > Novell Client for Windows NT > Properties >
          Location Profiles.Open a Workstation Package in NW Admin, and then go to the Client Configuration page.

I am unsure what the "WORKSTATION PACKAGE" is. When I  open my NWADMIN32, I don't find a workstation package as an object. Do I need to create this object?

I am using the latest NWclient for WinNT/2000 and NWADMIN32. I am not using ZenWorks on the general populus (just my test workstations).

As pwoolford say, you need Zen to get the schema extensions - so has it been installed into the tree (servers) ?

You should see win95 and WinNT default workstation packages as a choice of objects to create in a context if it's installed.

Roaming profiles means that the user
information is dynamically created at login time by the login client - whether it's MS or Novell . The Novell client portion that does this is the "Workstation Manager" and it uses ZEN. You may be able to do this w/o ZEN with Netware, but I expect that you will have to use the M$ client

Hold on... are you folks saying that this is clearly a Netware client issue?! All we're doing is instead of directing the roaming profiles to a directory on a NT server, we're redirecting them to a netware directory that is common to all users and where each user has his/her own sub-directory for the profile.

If that is the case, NT4 existed prior to ZEN. How is it that Netware users survived without ZEN??? How did they do it then? What is the workstation manager doing that my original setup (described above) is not.

Ahhh some light....okay what client are you using on the Windows NT machines????Is it a Microsoft on a Novell Client. If so which one.

I'm using Novell client v4.70.991202 on the Win2000 workstations and NT4 users are on client v4.70.

As suspected.....so to get a better understanding of what was\is being done with your roaming profiles.....how do you setup a user to use roaming profiles (in detail...both from the nwadmin and workstation end)

Another question....do you use windows nt domains in this environment as a means to manage\configure rights\access and settings to workstations if so how.

I am trying to understand how you do\have done roaming profiles with 4.5x and above clients without using zenworks.

I think everyone has missed what he is saying.  The roaming profiles are set up in NT and being saved to the Netware box to directories mapped through the clients on the user's machine.

Is the Netware Client set as the primary logon?  If not, the workstation is probably trying to get the profile before the Netware client can get the drive mapped.

Kevin Proctor, actually, I suspect that upon logout, the Netware connection is disconnected before all the profiles are completely written to the Netware server. Yes, the Netware client is the primary logon. This problem is still not completely resolved. We've just been living with it for now. Implementations of ZEN have not worked with my test id  logins.

pdeleon,

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Netminder
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Netminder
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Netminder
Why did you accept that post ?

Why are all the posts jumbled up ?

Netminder, you can take whatever action you like. I left a reply on Feb 27th 2001 which no one followed up with until you posted. I pretty much go thru all my questions for a satisfactory answer. Not receiving one, I don't award points. While I might miss one or two for a while, I find I'm pretty much on top of the responses and award if they answer my question or issue. WHATEVER!