26-letter limit for reader mappings

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Maelvon
Messages: 15
Registration: February 7, 2018 - 10:14

September 13, 2019 - 3:56 PM

Hello,

I currently share folders on my NAS (Samba shares) with my users via a "Drive Mapping" GPO that mounts shares based on their group membership. However, I have many shares, more than twenty-six, exceeding the alphabetical limit for some users. I would like my users to have a clear view of the shares they have access to, so using UNC paths doesn't seem feasible.

As a solution, I considered creating symbolic links (mklink) in the "C:\MYNDD\Shares" folder of the shares authorized for the logged-in user. For now, this is the only solution I can think of, but perhaps there are others?

I have a script that runs at user logon to create the symbolic links for the shares they have access to, and a logout script to unmount the shares upon logout.

The problem is that a user's logon script runs within the context of that user's privileges. Therefore, they don't have the right to use the "mklink" command. I bypassed this by setting the "Computer Configuration / Windows Settings / Security Settings / Local Policies / User Rights Assignment / Create Symbolic Links" parameter to "MYNDD\Domain Users". Not ideal! For now, it seems like a somewhat unreliable solution. How do you handle it if you exceed the 26-drive letter limit in Windows 10?

I saw that there's also the "volume mount points" solution, but I can't find any information on how to manage them via GPO, as easily as "Drive Mapping".

Thanks for your insights,

Maelvon
nliaudat
Messages: 29
Registration: August 8, 2019 - 8:31 AM

October 8, 2019 - 11:37

What you're looking for is called "Junction point".
More info at https://cects.com/overview-to-understan ... reloaded=1.
Maelvon
Messages: 15
Registration: February 7, 2018 - 10:14

October 11, 2019 - 10:36

Thanks for the info about "Junction Point".

To take this a step further, is there a way to automatically mount shares using a GPO? Like you can do in RSAT with "drive mapping" for drive letters. Drive mapping only allows letters; hasn't Windows developed a tool to simplify this?

Regards,

Maelvon
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