samba - Feb 2003 - Samba failover

Well, I was wondering how to setup samba installations to provide
fail-over for linux boxes that will be acting as a print-server for
windows clients in an NT Domain (windows PDC and WINS servers).  I
didn't see any ideas in The Unofficial Samba Howto and the Samba-
HOWTO-Collection.  I was thinking having two print-servers NATed
behind a linux router, and have the linux router do port forwarding
on 137-139 to the main samba print-server, which talks to LPRng to
talk to network attached printers.  If the samba print-server goes
down then switch the port-forwarding destination to the backup box
with a similar configuration.

What are the better ways?
If there aren't any (which I doubt), is this even workable (I'm not
sure having these two samba servers with the same netbios name, etc,
is workable).

Thanks for any ideas,
~ Daniel








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This problem has just been dumped into my lap over the last two or three 
days. I'm hopelessly in over my head here, and I'm hoping I can get some
direction here. I've been searching google for some time, and not come 
up with my answers. Warning, much of what you are about to hear is 
ludicrously stupid on a technical level.

I work for a small computer consulting firm. One of our clients is 
running a Windows 2000 file and print server with ADS. We intend to 
format this machine and reload Windows 2000, but without ADS. This 
server houses files for a proprietary program that is unsupported if the 
file server used is Samba.

This client has about 20 computers at their offices, no more than a 
dozen of which ever use the server at the same time. The one machine is 
far more than enough to handle the load, but they decided they need 
failover (even though they've never had this server crash). They have 
purchased two Dell servers with SCSI hard drives and Intel Xeon 2,4 Ghz 
processors (yes, to do file and print sharing for 20 users; I told you 
it was ludicrous). My PHB has signed a contract with them to install 
Linux OSs on these boxes, and run Samba on them. Since their proprietary 
application isn't supported for Samba, they aren't going to move it over
to either of these machines. These machines are only to do 
authentication in the unlikely event that the PDC (the Windows 2000 
machines) should fail.

I've done a lot of google searching and haven't come up with many leads.
Is there a HOW-TO fr setting up Samba in a failover environment, 
specifically in making it play nice with a Windows PDC? The goal here is 
to have zero downtime, but I don't think the client understands that if 
those files for his application aren't present on the Samba servers, 
authenticating with them won't help him at all.