Samba Recycle Bin

Easy to setup, and helps provide an added layer of protection. I added the bold text to my smb.conf, restarted samba...and voila!

[share]
path = /samba/share
read only = No
valid users = @DomainUsers
create mask = 0770
directory mask = 0770

vfs objects = recycle
recycle:repository = .recyclebin/%U
recycle:keeptree = Yes
recycle:touch = Yes
recycle:touch_mtime = Yes
recycle:versions = Yes
recycle:maxsize = 0
recycle:exclude = *.tmp

Free Reservationless Conferencing Calls

My Company is doing a trial of www.freeconferencecall.com. They provide free conference services of up to 96 participants per call. There is a full list of features here. Since many of our home office employees have unlimited phone plans (i.e. no long-distance charges), I think this will work well. If we need a toll-free call-in number, the pricing is $0.06/minute/user...still very fair. They even include free recording...on our current service, we pay a flat rate of $15 for any recording (same rate if it is a 2 minutes or 2 hours). Will post again soon with the results of our trial!

Windows Explorer: Show Drive Letters First

This really should be the default setting, I have this changed on all my computers. Even with only a few network drives, I find this much more user friendly. Just a quick registry edit:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/showdrivelettersfirst.htm

Display Warning before login for Windows XP

For a security audit, my company was required to display a warning to all users before they are log on to windows. Here are the items we added to the registry to make it possible:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"legalnoticecaption"="Notice"
"legalnoticetext"="Use of this system is limited to authorized individuals. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. The administrators of this system reserve the right to monitor its use as necessary to ensure its stability, availability, and security."

Here is a link to the MS Knowlegebase article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/101063

Samba Printer Setup

Finally added our office printers to our samba server. This guide was very helpful:

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/network_administration_guides/samba_reference_guide/29_CUPS-printing_105.html

My one problem was when adding the drivers. I kept receiving the error message: "WERR_ACCESS_DENIED". In the process of looking at many configurations and setup guides, I had set my smb.conf incorrectly. After lots of digging, I found that I had incorrectly set this parameter: "use client driver = yes". In my scenario, it should be "use client driver = no".