Offline files in a 2000 AD

[barnski]

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.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

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:

 

[barnski]

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.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

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