[WEB4LIB] Re: Netscape profiles vs. logon ID

[TMGB]

James Klock,

Thought you might want this tidbit of info.

I haven't made any special login scripts but according to what I've read you
use a .bat extension by default unless you want to make the login mandatory by
creating the file NTuser.man.   From a book I have,  "Although users with
mandatory profiles may be permitted to modify their desktops, changes are not
saved to the profile.  As a result, the user always logs on with the same
environment settings."

Another book has a note  "Warning: You should not use the user environment
profiles to start a program when the users log on unless the profile somehow
depends on the user's name.  The Startup folder provides a much easier method
for running programs automatically."   But it sounds like your use does depend
on the user's name.  I've been looking into using the logon script myself
specifically to copy a default bookmarks.htm file to the public workstations,
but the newest version of the Client Customization Kit allows you to set a
default bookmark file.  The problem is that the newest Client Customization Kit
only supports Communicator and not the standalone Navigator.  Netscape told me
that Navigator 5.x will be supported by the CCK.


Thomas


James Klock wrote:

> Allow me to paraphrase what I think you're suggesting:
> Background: Netscape 4.x for Windows32 insists on having at least one User
> Profile, details of which are stored in the Windows registry (In the
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Netscape\Netscape Navigator\Users key).  If
> only one user profile exists, it will be chosen automatically.  If more
> than one profile exists, the user will be prompted at runtime for which
> profile to choose, UNLESS the command line (ie the shortcut) includes a
> -P"profilename" parameter.
>
> If there is only one user profile on the machine, Netscape will
> automatically use that profile, which includes processing the PREFS.JS file
> found in the directory specified in the DirRoot string within the Windows
> registry.
>
> It should therefore be possible to create several PREFS.JS files, to
> reflect the desired preferrences for different users.  These PREFS.JS files
> can be kept on the Primary Domain Controller, and the user or group login
> script can include a call to copy the PREFS.JS file desired for the current
> user to the DirRoot folder.
>
> I haven't played a lot with Windows NT login scripts, but I expect that
> they should be able to copy files from the server to the local machine,
> which is all that would be required of this technique.
>
> To use this workaround, each user must have write access to the PREFS.JS
> file.  This could allow a user to make unauthorized changes to that file
> (although they would disappear when the next user logged on, as the changed
> PREFS.JS file would then get overwritten).
>
> While this is an intriguing notion, I have already successfully implemented
> a workaround using the -P"profilename" command line switch, which is worked
> into distinct shortcuts for each user.  This worked well enough for me,
> because users do not generally have access to the Explorer, or to shortcuts
> that are not in the Start Menu of their own NT Profile.  It was thus a
> simple matter to modify the shortcuts available to each user to specify the
> desired Netscape User Profile for the NT account that has access to that
> shortcut.
>
> At 02:20 PM 1/11/99 -0800, you wrote:
> >Assuming that you're using Netscape 4.x, those settings are found in the
> >JavaScript file prefs.js. You can increase your security by writing these
> >preferences to the workstation each time a user logs as part of a login
> >script.  Settings could be matched to NT groups. The settings in a
> particular >prefs.js would reflect the group a user belongs to. I'm
> assuming that NT >allows this user-level control. I'd be surprised if it
> did not. This approach >would also allow you to centrally handle this at
> any desktop on the network.