feasible w/ samba?

[Bart Silverstrim]

On Oct 18, 2004, at 12:37 PM, stheg olloydson wrote:

>
> What you have here is a hardware, not software, problem. The root cause
> is the unreliable connectivity between buildings. To ensure all network
> resources are always available, use redundant fiber-optic connections
> and set your routing such that you can reach buildingX from buildingY
> via buildingZ, as well as directly.

Actually, it would be connectivity + bandwidth + geography.

Some of the buildings are close together...close enough that you can 
lean on the wall of one and throw a softball to hit the other.

Others are over 20 miles apart, and it's not really 3 buildings...I was 
using that just to simplify the scenario.  there would be 7.  
Unfortunately, there's no way we currently know of to lay out enough 
fiber for every building and still have reliable (and *fast*) transfers 
compared to a "proxy" approach as I was envisioning in my head.

> Then you can (although it may be heresy on this list) avoid using FBSD.
> Your simplest solution is to use Windows built-in Roaming Profiles. The
> feature exists to accomplish the exact task of making the user's
> resources (including desktop config) available on the login
> workstation.

the problem here is that we're currently using Windows profiles and 
home directories; it has problems, too.

I.e., it's not that every day people are moving buildings...they only 
occasionally do it.  We noticed problems with profiles in that some of 
the users like doing things like shutting down machines before a 
profile is fully saved, and saving data in locations that are not 
routinely backed up.  Profile corruption.

We're also currently using Terminal Servers, so profile corruption can 
be a worse problem, as is people logging into the wrong servers from 
the wrong locations.

We'll actually be locking out some "profile" features...too many 
complaints about students using illegible personalized themes when 
teachers try to help them.

Thanks for the input, though.  I didn't know if this was a feasible 
idea or not.  Didn't know what others on the list had run into.