samba - Jul 2007 - Promoting BDC to PDC

Hi,

Does someone know how will all my client machines find the BDC when 
the PDC is stopped. Both PDC and BDC are running Samba with LDAPSAM 
backend replicated on both the PDC with master LDAP database and BDC 
with replicated LDAP database. But when I stop PDC the clients are 
not detecting the BDC broadcast. The replication on all domain 
controllers are perfect.  I went as far as making BDC the new PDC by 
doing the following on smb.conf.  There's actually a little success 
when I did this.

         preferred master = Yes
         domain master = Yes

I was able to login but then could not access the shared drive 
running on a member server.  I made sure that the smb.conf file on 
the member server that contains all the shared drive is set to:

"Password Server = new PDC hostname"


Any idea of where I may be wrong?  I guess to make it short, how can 
I promote a BDC to a PDC, if in case the PDC crashed.  I want to make 
sure that if I promote one of the BDC to PDC, that all my user can 
still login and access shared files.

We have 4 machine running samba, 3 with LDAP backend (PDC, 2 BDC) and 
1 machine as fileserver or member server only and used for filesharing.


Thanks,
-Ivan

Ivan Ordonez wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does someone know how will all my client machines find the BDC when 
> the PDC is stopped. Both PDC and BDC are running Samba with LDAPSAM 
> backend replicated on both the PDC with master LDAP database and BDC 
> with replicated LDAP database. But when I stop PDC the clients are not 
> detecting the BDC broadcast. The replication on all domain controllers 
> are perfect.  I went as far as making BDC the new PDC by doing the 
> following on smb.conf.  There's actually a little success when I did 
> this.
>
>         preferred master = Yes
>         domain master = Yes
>
> I was able to login but then could not access the shared drive running 
> on a member server.  I made sure that the smb.conf file on the member 
> server that contains all the shared drive is set to:
>
> "Password Server = new PDC hostname"
>
>
> Any idea of where I may be wrong?  I guess to make it short, how can I 
> promote a BDC to a PDC, if in case the PDC crashed.  I want to make 
> sure that if I promote one of the BDC to PDC, that all my user can 
> still login and access shared files.
>
> We have 4 machine running samba, 3 with LDAP backend (PDC, 2 BDC) and 
> 1 machine as fileserver or member server only and used for filesharing.
>
>
> Thanks,
> -Ivan
>

Having the password server set to * should be sufficient to get the
rollover to work.

Accessing the files should require that the shares are declared in the
smb.conf on each domain controller. Other than that, once the new domain
controller takes over, everything should work.

I don't believe Samba actually differentiates between types of domain
controllers. In your case, the distinction just revolves around the LDAP
replication. Beyond that, I don't think the problem would be related to
your use of LDAP.