windows xp and 7 roaming profiles: symbolic links instead of folder redirection?

Hey all,

Over the next year we'll be migrating all our windows XP machines to windows 7.

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just to give a small overview of the environment:

- we're running mostly linux machines, with our project managers and our management running windows as well.

- for the linux users we have a terminal services windows XP machine set up where they can login using their roaming profile.

- the homedirectories and user profiles are stored on our linux dataserver.

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since i want to enable the users to use both windows 7 (on their own machine) and windows xp using their roaming profile i started looking into options available.

I read about folder redirection, but wondered: "if i reroute some of their folders to a network location on our linux dataserver (where they have access), will that mean it's like working on a network drive. or will they be able to access it like with a roaming profile when disconnected from the network?"

since i didn't find the answer to that immediatly  I started thinking about what i could do on the linux side: symbolic links

what i basically did was the following:

- i already had folder: <user>, so i created an empty folder <user>.V2 and gave the same access rights to it.
- I then logged in and out using windows 7, and it got populated with the default profile

then i started making symbolic links:

drwx------     2     <user>  users      4096      Mar 18 13:21      AppData
drwx------     2     <user>  users      4096      Mar 14 14:50      Contacts
lrwxrwxrwx  1     root         root              38      Mar 18 13:22      Desktop -> /data/windows/UserProfiles/<user>/Desktop
lrwxrwxrwx  1     root         root              46      Mar 18 13:22      Documents -> /data/windows/UserProfiles/<user>/My Documents/
lrwxrwxrwx  1     root         root              56      Mar 18 13:28      Downloads -> /data/windows/UserProfiles/<user>/My Documents/Downloads/
lrwxrwxrwx  1     root         root              41      Mar 18 13:23      Favorites -> /data/windows/UserProfiles/<user>/Favorites/
drwx------     2     <user>  users      4096      Mar 14 14:50      Links
lrwxrwxrwx  1     root         root              55      Mar 18 13:42      Music -> /data/windows/UserProfiles/<user>/My Documents/My Music/
-rw-------      1     <user>  users  524288      Mar 18 13:51      NTUSER.DAT
-rw-------      1     <user>  users         160      Mar 18 13:51      ntuser.ini
lrwxrwxrwx  1     root         root              60      Mar 18 13:43      Pictures -> /data/windows/UserProfiles/<user>/My Documents/My Pictures/
drwx------     2     <user>  users      4096      Mar 14 14:50      Saved Games
drwx------     2     <user>  users      4096      Mar 14 14:50      Searches
drwx------     2     <user>  users      4096      Mar 14 14:50      Videos

and ofcourse inside AppData:

 lrwxrwxrwx 1     root         root             47       Mar 18 13:21      Roaming -> /data/windows/UserProfiles/<user>/Application Data/

and then proceeded to log in on a Windows 7 machine.

the only folder that gave me trouble was .gimp_2.6 and somehow got created with root root ownership

which I solved by making a symbolic link as well

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I'm now able to log into both profiles without any issues (other than windows xp warning me to disable offline caching in order to prevent profile corruption)

and the settings are kept, files are accessible etc etc.

now my questions:

- how would folder redirection work if i where to point the windows 7 folders to /data/windows/UserProfiles/<user>/<folder>/
     - when connected to the network
     - when not connected to the network

- will this symbolic linking give me any issues? Do you forsee any problems with it?
    - it was a bit of work doing the symbolic linking the first time since i did it on my own profile folder (after backing it up), but i should be able to integrate it into the newuser-script i have to  
      set up the linux and windows home and profile directories.

thank you for your feedback.