Chapter 5 of Samba 3 By Example (
) states thusly:
Configuration of MS to Relocate PST File
Microsoft can store a Personal Storage file, generally known as
a PST file. It is the nature of email storage that this file grows, at
times quite rapidly. So that users' email is available to them at every
workstation they may log onto, it is common practice in well-controlled
sites to redirect the PST folder to the users' home directory. Follow
these steps for each user who wishes to do this.
Note
It is presumed that Express has been configured for use.
Launch Express 6. Click ToolsMaintenance->Store
Folder->Change.
Follow the on-screen prompts to relocate the PST file to the desired
location.
First, it should be noted that the above documentation is confusing, as
it first mentions then mentions Express. I recommend
updating the documentation:
Configuration of MS to Relocate PST File
Microsoft can store a Personal Folders file, generally known as
a PST file. It is the nature of email storage that this file grows, at
times quite rapidly. So that users' email is available to them at every
workstation they may log onto, it is common practice in well-controlled
sites to redirect the PST folder to the users' home directory. Follow
these steps for each user who wishes to do this.
To redirect the PST file in 2003 (older versions of
are slightly different), follow these steps:
1. Close
2. From the control panel, launch the Mail icon
3. Click Email Accounts
4. Make a note of the location of the PST file(s). From this location,
move the files to the desired location.
5. Add a new data file, selecting the PST file in the desired location.
Give this entry (not the filename) a different name such as "Personal
Folders - on server"
6. Close the Data Files window and click Email Accounts.
7. Select View or Change existing email accounts then click Next
8. Change the Mail Delivery Location to the "new" data file.
9. Go back to the Data Files window and delete the "old" data file entry.
Note that you may have to remove and reinstall Address Book
(Contacts) entries, otherwise the user may be unable to retrieve
contacts when addressing a new email message.
NTE: Express store files are quite different from store
files. Express store files can not be redirected to network
shares (the options panel won't allow it), but they can be moved to
folders outside the user's profile, or excluded from synchronization
with the roaming profile. While it is possible to redirect the data
stores by editing the registry, experience has shown that data
corruption and loss of messages will result. Like store files,
Express store files can become quite large, and when used with
roaming profiles can result in excruciatingly long login and logout
times while the stores are synchronized. For this reason, it is
recommended not to use Express in a roaming profiles environment.
To expand on the last note about Express -- using E's tools (as
described in the confusing documentation above) will allow you to change
the location where the E store files are kept. However, it will only
permit you to change it to a local drive. This path is stored in the
registry. I have attempted to change to a network path via the registry,
which indeed does take, but I've run into problems. It seems that
Express expects very fast response when reading these files. If
there is any lag at all, such as you might find across a network, it
assumes the files are unavailable and creates new, blank store files.
messages are effectively lost, and cannot be retrieved without the
use of third-party mailbox recovery tools. If you ask me, that's sloppy
and irresponsible programming on Microsoft's part -- but then again,
maybe it's intentional to force you to buy

Jonathan Johnson ha scritto:

NTE: Express store files are quite different from store
files. Express store files can not be redirected to network
shares (the options panel won't allow it), but they can be moved to
folders outside the user's profile, or excluded from synchronization
with the roaming profile. While it is possible to redirect the data
stores by editing the registry, experience has shown that data
corruption and loss of messages will result. Like store files,
Express store files can become quite large, and when used with
roaming profiles can result in excruciatingly long login and logout
times while the stores are synchronized. For this reason, it is
recommended not to use Express in a roaming profiles environment.

To expand on the last note about Express -- using E's tools (as
described in the confusing documentation above) will allow you to change
the location where the E store files are kept. However, it will only
permit you to change it to a local drive. This path is stored in the
registry. I have attempted to change to a network path via the registry,
which indeed does take, but I've run into problems. It seems that
Express expects very fast response when reading these files. If
there is any lag at all, such as you might find across a network, it
assumes the files are unavailable and creates new, blank store files.
messages are effectively lost, and cannot be retrieved without the
use of third-party mailbox recovery tools. If you ask me, that's sloppy
and irresponsible programming on Microsoft's part -- but then again,
maybe it's intentional to force you to buy

Hello everybody,

I didn't try Ms , but with E I had EXACTLY the same experience -
using roaming profiles with 50 users and hacking windows registry to
make it point to the network home directory created havoc.
Every time the network got a bit slow, E reset the connection to a new
-local- folder.
Tried using Thunderbird with Imap, but this was quite bulky, messages
get cached locally, and if there is a lot of mail, when the roaming user
changes workstation, he/she has to wait 'till the cache reloads (550M? 1G?).
(And for security reasons we must delete the cache anyway, and if we
don't use cache, the thing gets slow, and)
I then installed a web interface mail client which works quite well, but
is not as complete as E or Ms or Moz Thunderbird are.
I think if some guy from Mozilla would want to build an option to store
collected messages in a (centralized) database like Mysql, Thunderbird
would become a killer app for roaming profiles! (already tried giving
them a hint - no response yet)

Regards
Alan

12/19/05, Jonathan Johnson <jon (AT) sutinen (DOT) comwrote:
Configuration of MS to Relocate PST File

Microsoft can store a Personal Folders file, generally known as
a PST file. It is the nature of email storage that this file grows, at
times quite rapidly. So that users' email is available to them at every
workstation they may log onto, it is common practice in well-controlled
sites to redirect the PST folder to the users' home directory. Follow
these steps for each user who wishes to do this.

A few more notes on PST file location: (Some or all of this may be
beyond the scope of the Samba docs.)

Microsoft doesn't officially support storing PSTs on network drives
(see ), although it seems to be
a pretty popular setup.

In addition to manually moving PST files, you can set the default PST
location for new accounts by following instructions at

This setting could presumably be done using NT4-style policies, but I
haven't tried it.

We found that disabling oplocks on PSTs cut down on some locking
errors, and I've seen the suggestion from others on the mailing list
as well:
veto oplock files = /*.pst/*.PST/
3.0.21 includes an oplock rewrite; maybe the above will no longer be necessary?

The instructions that you provided for moving PST files don't work for
PSTs that store IMAP account information. Those can be manually moved
to network drives using a variation on your instructions:
1. Close
2. From the control panel, launch the Mail icon
3. Click Email Accounts
4. Make a note of the location of the PST file(s). From this location,
move the files to the desired location.
5. Back under Email Accounts, click Settings for the data file, and
select the new location when Windows complains about the file missing.
However, this breaks 's Send/Receive button, so we quit doing
it. I haven't figured out a fix for this. (From what I can tell,
PSTs for IMAP accounts store message rules/filters related to that
account, so they would be worth centralizing, even though the mail
itself is on an IMAP server.)

Josh Kelley

12/20/05, Alan Dodd <alan.dodd (AT) tele2 (DOT) itwrote:
Tried using Thunderbird with Imap, but this was quite bulky, messages
get cached locally, and if there is a lot of mail, when the roaming user
changes workstation, he/she has to wait 'till the cache reloads (550M? 1G?).
(And for security reasons we must delete the cache anyway, and if we
don't use cache, the thing gets slow, and)
I then installed a web interface mail client which works quite well, but
is not as complete as E or Ms or Moz Thunderbird are.
I think if some guy from Mozilla would want to build an option to store
collected messages in a (centralized) database like Mysql, Thunderbird
would become a killer app for roaming profiles! (already tried giving
them a hint - no response yet)

Thunderbird's profiles can be stored wherever you want; we store them
on people's networked home directories, to avoid bloating the roaming
profile. There are several ways to configure this; we did it by
setting up the Thunderbird shortcuts with a "-profile
h:\Mozilla\Thunderbird" parameter to force the use of that profile.

Josh Kelley

Josh Kelley wrote:
12/19/05, Jonathan Johnson <jon (AT) sutinen (DOT) comwrote:

>Configuration of MS to Relocate PST File
>>
>Microsoft can store a Personal Folders file, generally known as
>a PST file. It is the nature of email storage that this file grows, at
>times quite rapidly. So that users' email is available to them at every
>workstation they may log onto, it is common practice in well-controlled
>sites to redirect the PST folder to the users' home directory. Follow
>these steps for each user who wishes to do this.
>
>
A few more notes on PST file location: (Some or all of this may be
beyond the scope of the Samba docs.)

Microsoft doesn't officially support storing PSTs on network drives
(see ), although it seems to be
a pretty popular setup.

In addition to manually moving PST files, you can set the default PST
location for new accounts by following instructions at

This setting could presumably be done using NT4-style policies, but I
haven't tried it.

We found that disabling oplocks on PSTs cut down on some locking
errors, and I've seen the suggestion from others on the mailing list
as well:
veto oplock files = /*.pst/*.PST/
3.0.21 includes an oplock rewrite; maybe the above will no longer be necessary?

The instructions that you provided for moving PST files don't work for
PSTs that store IMAP account information. Those can be manually moved
to network drives using a variation on your instructions:
1. Close
2. From the control panel, launch the Mail icon
3. Click Email Accounts
4. Make a note of the location of the PST file(s). From this location,
move the files to the desired location.
5. Back under Email Accounts, click Settings for the data file, and
select the new location when Windows complains about the file missing.
However, this breaks 's Send/Receive button, so we quit doing
it. I haven't figured out a fix for this. (From what I can tell,
PSTs for IMAP accounts store message rules/filters related to that
account, so they would be worth centralizing, even though the mail
itself is on an IMAP server.)

Josh Kelley

I see the documentation has been updated. Many thanks to John H.
Terpstra and the rest of the Samba team.

Johnson

12/19/05, Jonathan Johnson <jon (AT) sutinen (DOT) comwrote:
>Configuration of MS to Relocate PST File
>>
>Microsoft can store a Personal Folders file, generally known as
>a PST file. It is the nature of email storage that this file grows, at
>times quite rapidly. So that users' email is available to them at every
>workstation they may log onto, it is common practice in well-controlled
>sites to redirect the PST folder to the users' home directory. Follow
>these steps for each user who wishes to do this.
>
A few more notes on PST file location: (Some or all of this may be
beyond the scope of the Samba docs.)

Microsoft doesn't officially support storing PSTs on network drives
(see ), although it seems to be
a pretty popular setup.

In addition to manually moving PST files, you can set the default PST
location for new accounts by following instructions at

This setting could presumably be done using NT4-style policies, but I
haven't tried it.

We found that disabling oplocks on PSTs cut down on some locking
errors, and I've seen the suggestion from others on the mailing list
as well:
veto oplock files = /*.pst/*.PST/
3.0.21 includes an oplock rewrite; maybe the above will no longer be necessary?

The instructions that you provided for moving PST files don't work for
PSTs that store IMAP account information. Those can be manually moved
to network drives using a variation on your instructions:
1. Close
2. From the control panel, launch the Mail icon
3. Click Email Accounts
4. Make a note of the location of the PST file(s). From this location,
move the files to the desired location.
5. Back under Email Accounts, click Settings for the data file, and
select the new location when Windows complains about the file missing.
However, this breaks 's Send/Receive button, so we quit doing
it. I haven't figured out a fix for this. (From what I can tell,
PSTs for IMAP accounts store message rules/filters related to that
account, so they would be worth centralizing, even though the mail
itself is on an IMAP server.)

I also vote for this solution (and I use it myself)

actually, I would add two corrections:

1) MS is not Express (many people don't distingush
between them)

2) not "Close ", but "make sure MS was started at least
once, because Control Panel Mail managing things appears only after
was started"

Josh Kelley