Hi, I have recently taken over administration of a Samba installation. I have experience administering a 5000-node NT domain (actually lots of domains, with trusts), and I am experienced in administering Solaris, but Samba is new to me, so I've subscribed to this mail list to try to get up to speed. It's a great list, and the level of support is fantastic, especially to Samba newbies like me. We have 5 Samba 2.0.5a servers on Solaris 2.7 (with NIS+ on the Solaris side, but no connection between smbpasswd and the NIS maps), each serving about 50 NT 4.0 clients, with a couple of Win98 notebooks at each site. We are currently operating in Security = User mode, because it was the simplest to implement, but it is a pain to administer, because people have to be manually added to each server if they want to access resources on a that server. We now have a nice 10MBit WAN connection between all the sites, so I would like to move to a single Domain model, to make administration much simpler. We would install the latest version of Samba when we go to make the transition, and would take that time to get all the NT clients up SP 6.0a. I have a couple of questions to the gurus in the list regarding this transition: 1. Is the Samba PDC model fully implemented? How do you administer domain users, via SWAT? 2. If so, how do SAM database replications happen? With NT 4.0, the PDC and BDC's exchange user account information automagically. Does this mechanism exist in Samba? 3. Would a Wintel PDC with Samba BDC's be better? I'm used to using User Manager for Domains to administer local and global groups on all servers. How would I do that with Samba BDC's? 4. I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask these questions. Is there a white paper anywhere to check this out? I appreciate any help this group has to offer on these questions. -Thanks, -Tom _________________________________________________________________ Tom Haws System Administrator Inform Network for Management Systems Tel: (250) 562-2628 1579 9th Ave, Prince George, B.C. V2L 3R8 Fax: (250) 562-6942 _________________________________________________________________
* Tom R Haws (PG) <trh@timberline.ca> [20001019 00:24]: =>Hi, => =>I have recently taken over administration of a Samba installation. I have =>experience administering a 5000-node NT domain (actually lots of domains, with =>trusts), and I am experienced in administering Solaris, but Samba is new to me, =>so I've subscribed to this mail list to try to get up to speed. It's a great =>list, and the level of support is fantastic, especially to Samba newbies like =>me. => =>We have 5 Samba 2.0.5a servers on Solaris 2.7 (with NIS+ on the Solaris side, =>but no connection between smbpasswd and the NIS maps), each serving about 50 NT =>4.0 clients, with a couple of Win98 notebooks at each site. We are currently =>operating in Security = User mode, because it was the simplest to implement, but =>it is a pain to administer, because people have to be manually added to each =>server if they want to access resources on a that server. => =>We now have a nice 10MBit WAN connection between all the sites, so I would like =>to move to a single Domain model, to make administration much simpler. We would =>install the latest version of Samba when we go to make the transition, and would =>take that time to get all the NT clients up SP 6.0a. => =>I have a couple of questions to the gurus in the list regarding this transition: => =>1. Is the Samba PDC model fully implemented? How do you administer domain =>users, via SWAT? => =>2. If so, how do SAM database replications happen? With NT 4.0, the PDC and =>BDC's exchange user account information automagically. Does this mechanism =>exist in Samba? => =>3. Would a Wintel PDC with Samba BDC's be better? I'm used to using User =>Manager for Domains to administer local and global groups on all servers. How =>would I do that with Samba BDC's? => =>4. I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask these questions. Is there a white =>paper anywhere to check this out? => =>I appreciate any help this group has to offer on these questions. => =>-Thanks, =>-Tom Since you're new to Samba the best favor you can do yourself is to get a copy of the book "Using SAMBA" by Robert Eckstein/David Collier-Brown/Peter Kelly. It is published by O'reilly. Before you get the $34.95 you can also look at it online at http://sunsite.auc.dk/samba/oreilly/using_samba/ Also look at the FAQs. HTH -Wash -- Odhiambo Washington Inter-Connect Ltd., wash@iconnect.co.ke 5th Flr Furaha Plaza Tel: 254 11 222604 Nkrumah Rd., Fax: 254 11 222636 PO Box 83613 MOMBASA, KENYA. By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun. -P.J. Plauger, "Computer Language", 1988, April Fool's column.
"Tom R Haws (PG)" wrote:> I have a couple of questions to the gurus in the list regarding this transition: > > 1. Is the Samba PDC model fully implemented? How do you administer domain > users, via SWAT?No. Samba 2.0.7 has limited PDC functionality for NT4 clients. Samba 2.2 expands this to cover Win2000 clients also. Samba TNG has fuller PDC fuctionality, but has now become a code fork with a slightly different direction.> 2. If so, how do SAM database replications happen? With NT 4.0, the PDC and > BDC's exchange user account information automagically. Does this mechanism > exist in Samba?Samba does not yet support PDC->BDC replication, tough judicious use of Unix utilities could be used to fake something up. This support is slated for Samba 3.0.> 3. Would a Wintel PDC with Samba BDC's be better? I'm used to using User > Manager for Domains to administer local and global groups on all servers. How > would I do that with Samba BDC's?Possibly. You could use Wintel PDC/BDC's. Then you could serve files from Samba with security=domain. This is bad because you need to authenticate from Windows, and with MS's latest license policy, you get badly screwed over. It's a good way to go if you have windows and wish to get rid of it, but if you don't have windows servers, it's not as attractive an option. If you set up a Samba DC with the existing stable code, you will lose User Manager/Server Manager, and similar MS tools. Stable Samba does not yet support the RPC calls these applications need.> 4. I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask these questions. Is there a white > paper anywhere to check this out?I believe there's some useful information at http://bioserve.latrobe.edu.au/samba but I can't check it, as Australia has dropped off the net for me right now... HTH, Mike
What about "MS's latest license policy" ? Does it mean that in my LAN, I can't use a NT server only as PDC, with files being stored on a Samba/Unix server ? (Of course, we have the right number of client connection licenses !) ----- Original Message -----> Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 12:33:54 +0100 > From: Mike Brodbelt <m.brodbelt@acu.ac.uk> > To: "Tom R Haws (PG)" <trh@timberline.ca> > Cc: samba@us4.samba.org > Subject: Re: Moving from Workgroup model to Domain > > .......................... > Possibly. You could use Wintel PDC/BDC's. Then you could serve files > from Samba with security=domain. This is bad because you need to > authenticate from Windows, and with MS's latest license policy, you get > badly screwed over. It's a good way to go if you have windows and wish > to get rid of it, but if you don't have windows servers, it's not as > attractive an option. > ..........................