samba - Nov 2002 - Samba Member Server or LDAP?

Hi,

Is it possible for samba to act as a member server in a samba domain?

What I'm trying to accomplish is:

I already have a samba pdc setup.  Everything works fine with login scripts,
password change, etc. However I need to move all of the home directories
onto another server with a much larger disk and would like to keep the
existing server to authenticate users against.  My idea was to point the new
"member" server to the existing "pdc" as password server,
and set the "pdc"
server logon home option to point to \\member\home\%u.

My ultimate goal is to centralize user/machine management and only have to
do it one one machine, but have the option of several servers available to
all users setup on said machine.

Would looking at implementing LDAP be a more efficient option?

Thanks for your help.

Nick

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> Message: 20
> From: "Nick Willey" <nwilley@ashgate.com>
> To: "Samba Mailing List" <samba@lists.samba.org>
> Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 15:54:42 -0500
> Subject: [Samba] Samba Member Server or LDAP?
>
> Hi,
>
> Is it possible for samba to act as a member server in a samba domain?
Yes
>
> What I'm trying to accomplish is:
>
> I already have a samba pdc setup.  Everything works fine with login
scripts,
> password change, etc. However I need to move all of the home directories
> onto another server with a much larger disk and would like to keep the
> existing server to authenticate users against.  My idea was to point
the new
> "member" server to the existing "pdc" as password
server, and set the
"pdc"
> server logon home option to point to \\member\home\%u.
>
> My ultimate goal is to centralize user/machine management and only have to
> do it one one machine, but have the option of several servers available to
> all users setup on said machine.
>
> Would looking at implementing LDAP be a more efficient option?
Samba can act as a domain member, but it needs some way to be able to
map windows SIDs to UID/GIDs for permissions etc to work, so you need to
be able to sync unix accounts for this to work. LDAP is probably the
better method. But you don't need samba to store it's passwords in LDAP,
in fact with 2.2.x it may be better not to.

So, you probably need to setup LDAP (or NIS or rysnc your passwd files)
regardless. LDAP has other benefits which NIS and passwd file syncing
don't have.

Buchan

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Buchan Milne                Mechanical Engineer, Network Manager
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