Handling of "default" profiles

[Patrick Farrell]

The other day I built a new image, and decided to try and configure all
of the apps, and then copy this to the default profile.

What happens however is when each user logs in, they now have all of
their files for various apps stored under the directory of the profile
that I used to set up.

For example, if I logged in as pjf, their mozilla files are under
documents and settings\pjf\... rather than under their name.

I'm just curious as to how everyone else handles this kind of stuff on
their images.

Patrick

[Tony Skalski]

Patrick,

I've found most apps work well with your scenario, except for
Netscape/Mozilla. These use the file %APP_DATA%\Mozilla\registry.dat to
locate profile information. When you copy the pjf profile to Default
User, the registry.dat therein pointed to a Moz profile within the pjf
(Windows) profile. All new users on the box will also point to that Moz
profile.

To get around this, after installing NS/Moz, we delete the default
profile and create a new one at c:\nsprofile. So when a new user logs
in, the registry.dat file in their (Windows) profile points to
c:\nsprofile. Yes, they still share one profile, however, it is not
within some other user's Windows profile.

Alternatives would be to store the profile in the users (network) home
directory, but in our environment this is problematic. We are waiting
for roaming support from within Mozilla. See:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124029

it is currently targeted for Moz 1.7.

Another would be to encourage the Mozilla developers to get registry.dat
out of the user's profile, however, I don't think that'll happen (soon,
at least).

ajs

Patrick Farrell wrote:

--
Tony Skalski
Systems Administrator
ajs.N...@stolaf.edu
-------------------------------------------------------
St. Olaf College 1510 St. Olaf Avenue
Information and Northfield, MN
Instructional Technologies 55057-1097
=======================================================

[Patrick Farrell]

Mozilla isn't too bad for me. I have a zen install of it. You can in
fact silent install Mozilla, and have it create the profiles. Word
Perfect in particular causes problems for me, and I think ACDsee was the
otherone with it's database.

Patrick