samba - Mar 2001 - Start smbd and nmbd daemons on other HP Unix (version 10.20) serv er

Hi everyone,

I would like to know if it's possible to start the smbd/nmbd daemons from an
other HP Unix server.  The installation of Samba has been made on a RAID
mounted on an other Unix server (the main one).

We want to do that because whe need to reduce the working flow in the main
server.

Thanks
Daniel Comtois, Unix Tech.
daniel.comtois@viasystems.com
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Hi Daniel,
Depending on WHAT you want to do:
If you want to have 2 Samba servers (one on each Unix Machine) giving people
access to the SAME filesystems (ie the files and directories the users are
going to access are on just ONE of the machines), you can nfs mount the
filesystems that Samba is sharing, install samba on the second Unix server,
and use a copy of the smb.conf file from the 1st server, changing just the
netbios name and interfaces (so you have the correct ip address).
  But this is somewhat dangerous for a couple of reasons -
 1. the server that is accessing the files via nfs is going to give slower
response to your clients, because it is going over nfs in addition to Samba
to give file access. 
 2. the two instances of samba (on machine 1 and machine 2) are not going to
be aware that another Samba is ALSO accessing the same files and
directories, so things like oplocks and oplock breaks are not going to work,
and you can run into the situation where you corrupt files, or have files
opened by two clients at the same time (one going thru Samba on unix 1, the
other going thru Samba on unix2) and writing over each other's work.
 3. Since the two servers must have different netbios names, you will have
to determine which clients will access the shares from which unix server; ie
client group A would attach to their shares via \\unix1\sharename
<file://\\unix1\sharename>  and client group B would attach via
\\unix2\sharename <file://\\unix2\sharename> .
 
In addition, I'm not sure how much 'load' you will save on your
primary Unix
server, since now you will be trading off the overhead of the smbd processes
on that machine with nfs accesses to the disk when the smbd processes on the
OTHER machine are accessing those files, but you should realize SOME
savings.
 
You might want to read the section in the O'Reilly book about Unix and
Locking (pg 151); effectively you will be putting yourself in this senario,
and will need to make sure that oplocks are disabled for any files/shares
that could have concurrent access from users on the two different machines.
 
If your main goal is to transfer the Samba load from the Main Unix server to
this other server, but still have the files accessed from the Main Unix
server, it would probably be better (and safer) to simply install samba on
the other unix server, and then
copy your samba lib directory (with the smb.conf and user.map, etc) from the
Main server to the Other server, changing the smb.conf file to use the
correct ip address for the new server.  Then nfs mount the filesystems that
have samba shares on them, and stop samba on the Main server ,and start it
up on the other server.  Then all smb activity will be moved off the Main
server.
 
Hope this helps,
Don

-----Original Message-----
From: Comtois, Daniel [mailto:daniel.comtois@viasystems.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 10:25 AM
To: 'samba@lists.samba.org'
Subject: Start smbd and nmbd daemons on other HP Unix (version 10.20) serv
er



Hi everyone, 

I would like to know if it's possible to start the smbd/nmbd daemons from an
other HP Unix server.  The installation of Samba has been made on a RAID
mounted on an other Unix server (the main one).

We want to do that because whe need to reduce the working flow in the main
server. 

Thanks 
Daniel Comtois, Unix Tech. 
daniel.comtois@viasystems.com