Persona Management Troubleshooting

[cshells]

So I can't seem to get persona management working correctly. I am running View 5.0, Win 7 64 bit.

I have followed the Microsoft article for setting correct permissions for the network share used for the profiles.

I applied the GPO through active directory to my linked clones OU.

     -Enabled persona management

     -Redirected persona to a network share

I ran rsop on the client desktop and can see the persona management GPO.

I am able to navigate to the share used for the profiles and add a new folder to it from the client.

From what I can tell when the user logs off the profile isn't being created on the network share. I am missing something and I am not sure where.

[MRM54]

I was having the same issue.  The View Persona Management services appears to be disabled by default on the VM.  I enabled it but is stays in 'Starting' status and I cannot successfully connect to the service.

Matt

[Sp1ritus]

Hi cshells,

     When you installed the View 5 agent on the Windows 7 box, did you select the Persona Management option to be installed?

     Without the actual component the GPO's cannot be applied (even though they say they are throuhg RSOP).  My persona management has been working no problem by doing exactly what you have done to setup the share, policies, etc.

Eric

[cshells]

I did select the Persona Management to be installed. I went in and checked the services and persona management is up and running. I have tried using the persona management as an active directory GPO and a local GPO. I have made changes to the active directory GPO and ran RSOP on the client machine, the GPO changes reflect on the client machine. The user profile just doesn't seem to be getting created on the network share. I have looked around at security, I have changed my permissions to include all View users to have full control to the folder, just to test. Still nothing. This is actually a proof of concept right now.

[dvhorvath]

I know this thread is a few days old now, so I don't know if you've already gotten this working or not. I have two questions:

1. Do the user accounts in Active Directory have a user profile path defined? That would be on the Profile tab of the user's properties in AD, and if that's populated you'll have to follow step 8 on page 182 of the View 5 Administration Guide. It sounds like the user's may be writing their persona data to a profile path defined in their user account in AD.
2. I really don't mean any offence by this one, and I'm sorry to even ask it but... are you sure the UNC path you've used in the GPO is correct, with no typos or mis-spellings? If you can navigate to the share from the View desktops, then it's not a communications issue, but if the server or share name happened to have been mis-spelled in the GPO, that could cause the data not to be written to the share too.

Dave

[cshells]

1. None of the users have a user profile path defined.

2. No offence taken, I have managed to screw things up with mis-spellings before. I will double check, I am pretty sure I even tried various ways for the UNC path. I tried x.x.x.x/<folder name>, //<server>/<folder>

[dvhorvath]

I was really hoping it might be that first one, since that would make the most sense. There is one other odd situation that VMware includes in the documentation. If any part of the UNC path defined in the GPO doesn't exist, Windows will create the missing parts for the first user, and protect those elements from being written to by other users. For example, if the UNC path is \\Server\Share\Profiles\%UserName% and the Profiles directory doesn't exist yet, then the first time a user logs in, Windows will create the Profiles directory and make that user the Creator/Owner, precluding other users from writing to the Profiles directory after that.

Also, have you tried something as simple as \\Server\Share\%UserName% to just have all of the profile folders created at the root of the share you've created? If %UserName% isn't specified anywhere in the UNC path, VMware will append %UserName%.%DomainName% at the end of the path by default, but it might not hurt in this case to explicitly include it just to be sure it's there.

Dave

[cshells]

Ya I was reading that when I went through the installation. The thing is, the users folder never even gets created. I actually have the UNC as //server/share/%username% so VMware will create the users folder. The folder is at the root level too. I will make sure to double check this tonight, but I was pretty sure this is exactly how I have it set up.

I do agree the UNC path seems like it would be the problem, since I can manually navigate to the folder from the user computer and create a folder within it. Which should rule out permisions. What is sad is when I figure it out, it will probably be something pretty stupid.

[dvhorvath]

I notice that you're using forward slashes in the UNC path when you post it here. Is that the way you have it in your GPO as well? Those should be back slashes, so \ in all the places you have / in your post above. Could that be it?

Dave

[cshells]

Haha...your right. I have no idea why I was typing them like that. I just wasn't paying attention. No, my UNC is \\.

It is actually \\dc-a\vprepository\profiles\%username%. I also have tried x.x.x.x\\vprepository\profiles\%username% and

dc-a.<domain>.com\vprepository\profiles\%username%. I just checked.

So I have manage user persona enabled and persona repository location with the UNC path. So with those two options enabled, it should redirect correct?

Isn't the folder redirection option used for redirecting certain folders to different locations? I enabled one of them to see what it would do, but won't the user profile be created with the first two options enabled? Or do I understand this incorrectly?

[neenarazdan]

Check if you don't have Microsoft GPO " Only allow local user profiles" policy setting enabled as this policy blocks roaming profiles from being used on a computer

If you enable both the "Prevent Roaming Profile changes from propagating to the server" setting and the "Only allow local user profiles" setting, roaming profiles are disabled for that computer. These policy settings are in the Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles node.

Regarding your second question:

So I have manage user persona enabled and persona repository location  with the UNC path. So with those two options enabled, it should  redirect correct?

Neena- These two settings are sufficient for roaming the profile to remote unc path. Redirection will not work.

Isn't  the folder redirection option used for redirecting certain folders to  different locations? I enabled one of them to see what it would do, but  won't the user profile be created with the first two options enabled? Or  do I understand this incorrectly?

Neena- Yes. Folder redirection is meant to redirect certain folders to different location of your choice.  If you want Folder redirection to work, other than enabling Persona management, you need to navigate to folder redirection part of Persona Management Group policy to enable redirection for particular folder ( say My documents) and specify UNC path say \\server\folder\%username%\My Documents.

Remember that if you redirect a folder ( say Desktop), that particular folder will no longer get replicated to UNC path that you specified for Persona Repository . In other words, persona folder redirection for a particular folder takes precedence over Persona Roaming

[cyberjohnny]

I have the same issue as Matt posted about the VMware Personal Management Service not starting.

Did you end up working out why the service would not start?

I  have tried everything I can think of. When it is installed it is  disabled by default on my Master-7x64 (with the VMware View Script Host Service) and if I enable it and try and start it - it  just hangs on 'starting'. Even tried it with a fresh install of Windows  7? I am assuming this service needs to be running in order for the  Persona Management to work corectly.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

John,

[neenarazdan]

For service not starting, the only possible reason I can think of is that either Persona GPO is not applied at AD level or is not propagating to the desktop.

Please check if it is not.

[cyberjohnny]

Ah, thanks neenarazdan!

I had applied the Persona GPO to a UC containing my view users, it needs to be applied to a UC containing the view "Computers". I also moved my gold master WIN7 to the same computer UC and re-installed the view agent - all good!

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Cheers.

[neenarazdan]

No Worries:) I'm glad your problem is fixed!

[tbraxton]

Do your users that profiles are being created for have, at the very least, "MODIFY" rights to the VPRepository directory on your file server?

[cshells]

I am pretty sure they did. This was a proof of concept setup, so it has all been taken down now. Thanks for the reply though.