samba - Apr 1998 - configuring samba as a PDC

Hello. I am new to Samba, so if my questions are basic, please forgive me.
A few weeks ago, I managed to get Samba running on my BSD/OS 2.1 server.
The samba version is 1.9.15p4 as supplied by default with this OS
distribution.

Everything seems to work well on it. The shares are accessible OK. We also
had an NT 4.0 server on our LAN that was the PDC. Unfortunately, it died a
horrible death last week - crashed completely. Now we don't have a PDC and
the win 95 computer logons are not being authenticated. I was wondering,
is it possible to make Samba behave as a PDC, so that the win 95 machines
can log on? Would this would make the users' home directory shares
available without any more authentication? (Currently, all the users share
the same logon in the NT domain, and then access their home directory
shares on unix by running \\unixserver\share from the win 95 "run
command"
menu, and then have to type their unix passwords again). If it can, it
will make things very easy for users on our LAN, because many of them are
not comfortable with FTP. Using the network neighbourhood from win 95 is
much easier for them. It would also save us the hassle of making sure that
a PDC is available, since the unix server is on all the time and is far
more stable.

If there are any good web sites with documentation of this subject, I
would appreciate some pointers.

TIA.

--
Anand

When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you
modify the problem, not the remedy.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello,

I've got a relatively interesting problem here, and I need some more
information on how to resolve it before I begin.  Basically, this is the
gist:

I've got a large network, spread over three geographic areas.  We use a
subnetted private IP scheme.  Each area (one office per area) has it's own
10.*.0.0/16 subnet.  Each office also has one server acting as a
DCHP/Samba/NFS host.  We've assigned a workgroup name to each
office/subnet.  Currently, we can mount shares on other subnets by
specifying that host's IP or NetBIOS name, however we cannot browse to
remote shares.  We can browse and mount shares in the local workgroup,
however the remote workgroups do not even appear in the Network
Neighborhood.

The servers are each set up as local master browsers, and are set to
remote sync browse lists with one another, however we still cannot see
other workgroups if they are on separate subnets.  (If someone log gets a
DHCP IP on the local subnet, but has a different workgroup name configured
than the local name, then that workgroup shows up in the Network
Neighborhood.  It's just workgroups on other subnets which are missing.)

I've been told that the way to resolve this is to configure my one of the
Samba servers as a domain controller (there is no NT box on our network to
act as such)  I'm willing to try this, however I'm concerned about one
thing or two:  Will setting my Samba box up as a PDC mean that all of my
hosts must authenticate to that box upon startup?  Or can I simply keep my
authentication schemes the same as they have been (user authentication
performed by the host being accessed)?

My other question is this:  Will this provide me with the ability to
browse workgroups on remote subnets without having to configure individual
hosts and/or lmhosts files on each of my Windows machines?  I'd rather
roll out a central solution on this issue rather than a solution on a
'per host' basis.  That is way too time consuming, and would need me to
update it each time I added or removed a new host from the workgroups
(right?).

In any case, the more information you can provide to me, the better I'll
feel about the situation.  I'm sure that Samba is the way to go here, but
I'm just not sure how much work it'll be in the near term, and I need to
plan my projects and maintenance accordingly.

Regards,
Ben Pitzer

- -- 
Ben Pitzer
Systems Administrator
NeTraverse
http://www.netraverse.com
Email: ben@netraverse.com
Tel:   919-465-6400
Fax:   919-465-6401

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE6rWssLVEMrcXswYQRAmyOAJ0QgRvQQIzn37sc6doh2nRgm6ANAQCeLdFI
lwstz/LhDd0uM1aYLVGrLIk=xbR7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----