The comments on "Debugging Problems with Offline Files" were auto-closed after 30 days, but based on email traffic it's worth resurrecting the topic. And yes, the next release of .Text should give me more control over that whole pesky auto-closure thing…

So here's a couple of (edited) email questions and my best efforts at answers, based on a reading of the internal FAQ:

Q: For ages we've been battling with the fact that when a laptop user goes to a remote site, they work quite happily with their My Documents directory cached offline. However, because they are offline, the whole server is flagged as offline. They can go online and access the server, but then the My Documents files start getting dragged across the line - not good if you were on a 9.6k GSM mobile connection from the other side of the planet! I finally found this documented in Q320819. My reading is that before April 2002, it didn't work the way it's now designed. We've basically got to start looking for alternatives but I was wondering if you had any idea or can find someone who knows why.

A: Yes, the offline files algorithm maintains connection state on a per-server basis instead of a per-share basis. This is to prevent hidden dependencies between files on the same server manifesting themselves as inconsistencies between different shares. Having said that, there are two possible solutions I would try:

  1. Turn off all automatic synchronization, and force users to synchronize manually. Of course, this may be unacceptable for user-experience reasons, i.e. they forget to ever synchronize and then bitch because "the server lost my files" :-)
  2. Use the new slow-link behavior in XP SP2, or alternatively the QFE for XP SP1, WinSE bug 37222. The earlier behavior from KB263097 was that after going offline it would auto-reconnect if the link speed was above 64 KB, set by HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\NetCache\SlowLinkSpeed. However, this only affected reconnections rather than the initial connection, so users had to use "csccmd /disconnect" to force files offline on slow links, and it used reported NIC speed, instead of actual end-to-end speed. Not good. With the new behavior, you can set slow-link policy as before, create HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\NetCache\GoOfflineOnSlowLink and set it to 1, and reboot. Now, whenever the user logs in, if the connection speed to that server is below their slow link speed setting, they'll remain offline as far as their offline files are concerned.

Q: The error I am receiving is "Errors occured while synchronizing your data. Unable to make "xxx" available offline on "yyy". I did not see any posts about this issue, and was wondering if anyone else has experienced the same issue and resolved it successfully. Offline files has worked successfully in the past for me.

A: This typically means that somewhere in your folders you've now got a file of a type that has been excluded from offline files by Group Policy. One good reason for doing this is to exclude database-type files that may be being updated on both server and client - such as a .PST file that you've opened from Outlook at work on the server, and then again via offline files from Outlook at home on your laptop. The exclusion list can be changed via Group Policy: edit the "Computer Configuration->Adminstrative Templates->Network->Offline Files->Files Not Cache" setting, which defaults to "*.SLM;*.MDB;*.LDB;*.MDW;*.MDE;*.PST;*.DB?"

Edit: I've turned off comments on this thread - if you have a question, please go here instead.