Maybe later I will write an introduction to that title, but for now, just know that
I am in charge of a corporate network that has been using My Documents redirection
in combination with Offline Caching for many, many years. I am convinced the cost
overhead involved with this technology far outweighs and productivity gains that we
get. Don’t get me wrong, I believe offline caching has its place, just not as an all
encompassing corporate policy. Also, this is not meant to bash Microsoft. I just want
them to realize the real world frustrations that come from using a technology they
promote so heavily.

Reason Number 1

File caching is done on a per-system basis, so files cached by users other
than the primary user who log onto the computer will have their files permanently
added to the offline cache, even if they never plan to login to the system again.
The only way to override this is to manually enter the primary user name in a registry
key, and remember to change it whenever the primary user of the computer changes.

One thing many people don’t realize is that offline file caching is not per-user,
but per system. Take this scenario:

You are redirecting documents administratively by using My Documents redirection
in group policy and choosing to make the files available offline. The primary user
of the computer logs in and logs off, synchronizing his My Documents folder. Now a
local cached copy exists for all of the files in his My Documents folder.

Now an administrator comes along, and he logs into the computer. Because he has
the same group policy, his My Documents folder is redirected and made available offline.
Now the offline file has files that appear like this:

File Name	File Path
text1.txt	\\server\share\home\user1
text2.txt	\\server\share\home\user1
text1.txt	\\server\share\home\admin 1>
text2.txt	\\server\share\home\admin 1>

 

User 1 now logs back into the computer, and when he goes to log off, his files
and the administrators files are synchronized. Supposedly, offline caching tries to
deal with this by looking at network security and making sure user1 only tries to
synchronize files he has permissions to. But the admin files are still there.

On top of that, lets say you decide \\server\share is
a bad design for home shares because it is tied to a server. So you decide to change
the path for all home shares to \\domain\dfs\home.
Even if you get this working correctly for user1, you may still have problems because
admin1 is still pointing to the old removed share in the cache. This means you need
to run csccmd and move shares so that all the shares are moved.

Anyway, one way to deal with all of this was added in a hotfix that was included in
Windows XP SP2. As the article explains, you are given the option to set registry
keys and designate the primary user of the computer. In the future, all other user
files cached are discarded at logoff.

Below is the KB Article (KB 811660) that references the registry changes that need
to be made.

Files that you add to the Offline
Files folder on a Windows XP-based computer are synchronized when another person uses
the computer

A newsgroup customer recently asked us how to synchronize his Offline Files with a
server after the server had been renamed. Offline Files in Windows Vista provides
scripting support to enable users to write custom scripts to perform such tasks. To
illustrate this, one of our Offline Files developers created a script that uses the
“rename” functionality offered by the scripting model to rename the path in the local
cache from the old server to the new server. 

I’ve added the script as a blog
article. Use the following syntax to run the script on each affected client.

cscript CscRenameItem.vbs /OldItemPath:\oldserver /NewItemPath:\newserver

Some notes on this operation:

• The script must be run on every client with data cached from the original server.  

• The script doesn’t rename the item at the time it is run.  It merely records
  the “old” and “new” names.  A system restart is required to apply the change. 
  When the system is restarted, Offline Files renames the server entry in the local
  cache according to the parameters provided to the script.  Once the restart is
  complete, Offline Files will automatically synchronize the contents of the cache with
  the server of the new name.

• This processing does not validate the existence of the “new” name provided. 
  If you provide the name of a server that does not exist, the affected files will remain
  in the Offline Files cache, unsynchronized with any server.  

• Our example shows a rename for a server.  The UNC paths provided can also reference
  a shared folder.

You’ll need to restart Windows Vista after successfully running this script. After
the restart, the files cached for \oldserver will
now be cached for \newserver. 

–Jill

The
Filing Cabinet : Updating your Offline Files cache in Windows Vista to point to a
new server

A blog reader recently asked us how to synchronize Offline Files from the command
prompt instead of from the Sync Center as described in a previous
blog post. Good question! Synchronizing Offline Files from the command line is
performed using a WMI script. We have published two example scripts that illustrate
how to do this.

The scripts are:

CscSyncAll.vbs –
Sync the entire cache
CscSync.vbs –
Sync a particular UNC path

Note that most of the text in these scripts is for handling script switches and formatting/reporting
progress. The code to actually perform the sync is relatively little.

–Jill

The
Filing Cabinet : Synchronizing Offline Files from the command line