Terminal Server Commands: FLATTEMP

FLATTEMP enables or disables flat temporary directories.

NOTE: When you enable this utility, it changes the permissions on the TEMP directory to:

Logged on user FC
Administrator FC
System FC

No other accounts will be in the ACL and the "Everyone" and "Creator/Owner" groups are removed. All users will need to modify their environment variables, for TEMP and TMP, to point to their home directory. If users do not change their variables, they will not have access to the TEMP directory.

Syntax

flattemp [/query] [/enable] [/disable] [/?]

Parameters

none

/query /enable /disable /? (help)

Security Restrictions

Only administrators can run flattemp.

FLATTEMP -- Additional Notes

The default method of creating temporary directories for multiple users (usually pointed to by the TEMP and TMP environment variables) is to create subdirectories in the TEMP directory, using the logon ID as the subdirectory name. For example, if the TEMP environment variable points to the directory C:\TEMP, the temporary directory assigned to the user logon ID 4 is C:\TEMP\4.

Use the flattemp command to prevent subdirectories from being created and to point directly to the TEMP directory. This is useful when you want the users' temporary directories to be contained in their home directories, whether on a Terminal Server's local drive or on a network share drive. You should use this command only when each user has a unique home directory.

To configure a unique home directory for each user, follow these steps:

1. Log on as the user.
2. Start the System application in Control Panel.
3. Set the user's environment variables, TEMP and TMP, to a TEMP directory in the user's home directory; for example, X:\Users\Bobw\Temp.

After each user has a unique TEMP directory, use flattemp /enable to enable flat temporary directories.

WARNING: You may encounter application errors if the user's temporary directory is on a network drive. This happens when the network share momentarily becomes inaccessible over the network. No disk corruption happens, but because the application's temporary files are either inaccessible or out of synchronization, the application responds as if the disk has crashed. Therefore, moving the temporary directory to a network drive is not recommended. The default is to keep the temporary directories on the local hard disk. If you experience strange behavior or disk corruption errors with certain applications, stabilize your network or move the temporary directories back to the local hard disk.