Categories
MS Windows Vista 7, 8 etc Samba

Using Vista Offline Files with a Samba Share

So after tearing my hair out for the last week with Vista – almost to the point when I was going to put Windows XP back on – I have finally got Vista Offline files working with my Samba shares…

I like to move the My Documents folder on each of my machines from the C: drive to a network share that lives on my Linux file server – on my laptop I make that available offline – in case I am away from home etc. On Windows XP this was fine and worked pretty well. I recently upgraded to Vista and mapped the drive for my home directory – all good made it available offline (or “Always available offline” as Vista now calls it). It did its initial sync and all was good.

Next time I logon (and after making sure I am connected to the network) I go back to my network drive to make sure its working online – and nope it isn’t! I make sure I can ping the machine – thats okay and I can access the share online if I access the machine by its ip – \\192.168.1.4\share. Very weird and very frustrating!

Whilst searching for the solution I came across some useful info on making sure Samba is setup correctly for offline files (mainly to do with oplocks – see below for a useful link).

Anyway tonight I have a brain wave whilst looking at Vista’s user management stuff and reading some more stuff on the net. It turns out that Vista’s offline files works per user rather than per share and as a result is more reliant on usernames and passwords. My Samba share uses a different password to my vista login. So I made them the same – and hey presto it works!

So in summary if using offline files in Vista make sure your usernames and passwords match. I also think I’ve seen something under the user accounts section that lets you link in different user account details – but I haven’t tried that yet. Here is a screenshot.
Vista Network Password Screenshot

Vista Offline Files Samba Settings Link Broken as of June 08 ;-(

Categories
Technology

Ollie’s on the blogwagon!

I’ve held off for a while but now it seems that everyone has a blog these days! Scott Mills said on Radio 1 the other day that some people are even posting as their Cat’s on My Space… all very strange!

Anyway I’ve had quite a few things I’ve wanted to share on the web over the last few years but its always been such a hassle to get them online (mainly articles on techy stuff that others might find useful) hopefully using a blog will make it less painful!

Hopefully (if time permits) I plan on putting articles up on my experiences with Linux, Web Development, Mountain Biking & Life in general!

Let me know what you think of the design of the site – I’m not 100% happy with it – but it will do for now! The Blog itself is WordPress which I went for after trying LoudBlog which I came across on Hanni Ali’s Blog. The design is originally by AskGraphics.com I’ve just dropped in my Oliver’s Yard sign (Oliver’s Yard will be the name of my study/messy area in my new house!!) and tweaked it a bit.

Cheers

Ollie

Ollie!