samba - Jun 2005 - Windows XP Home accessing a Samba PDC

A friend of mine has asked me a question in my role as "biggest local
geek" (for very small values of "local"). Googling hasn't
turned up an
answer, so does anyone here know if this is possible?

At his business, they had a mixture of XP Home, XP Pro and Win98
machines accessing a Samba server with security=user. The server has
one big everyone-read-write drive and a few smaller areas restricted
to a few users by the "valid users" directive.

This isn't at all secure though, and means whenever a person gets a
new computer they have to mess about matching the username and
password with the Linux server. It is also becoming a pain to manage
as their network grows, and as they have now removed all the Win98 and
all except two of the XP Home clients, they are wondering about
switching Samba to become a PDC. This would allow them a lot more
flexibility in terms of permissions on the share, even without ACLs.

Obviously, the XP Home machines will not be able to log into the
domain. However, is there any way to allow them access to the public
everyone-read-write anyway, even though they are not in the domain?

Thanks for your help!

Richard Gaywood wrote:
>A friend of mine has asked me a question in my role as "biggest local
>geek" (for very small values of "local"). Googling hasn't
turned up an
>answer, so does anyone here know if this is possible?
>
>At his business, they had a mixture of XP Home, XP Pro and Win98
>machines accessing a Samba server with security=user. The server has
>one big everyone-read-write drive and a few smaller areas restricted
>to a few users by the "valid users" directive.
>
>This isn't at all secure though, and means whenever a person gets a
>new computer they have to mess about matching the username and
>password with the Linux server. It is also becoming a pain to manage
>as their network grows, and as they have now removed all the Win98 and
>all except two of the XP Home clients, they are wondering about
>switching Samba to become a PDC. This would allow them a lot more
>flexibility in terms of permissions on the share, even without ACLs.
>
>Obviously, the XP Home machines will not be able to log into the
>domain. However, is there any way to allow them access to the public
>everyone-read-write anyway, even though they are not in the domain?
>  
>
Well yeah.  Give them an LDAP account.  Use the map network drive 
function on the xp home box, and check reconnect at logon.  Enter 
uname/pword in dialogue box.  Make a shortcut to the mapped drive and 
put it in the starup folder.  When user reboots the login dialogue will 
pop up when the startup folder is accessed by the system.  It's sounds 
clunky but it should work.

TMS III
>Thanks for your help!
>  
>

> Obviously, the XP Home machines will not be able to log into the
> domain. However, is there any way to allow them access to the public
> everyone-read-write anyway, even though they are not in the domain?
Your XP Home machines will function just the same connecting to a pdc as
they do now with a non-pdc machine.  You can still access your network
shares and such so long as the usernames match and either your passwords
match or the user is ok entering the different passwords.

One way of doing this in XP home is to map the drive. As you know, XP
home is not built for a role as a domain client, but will do workgroups
just fine, with no security. Because your drive that you want to access
from XP home is read/write everyone, you can just map the drive and make
sure you check the box that says reconnect at login. Also make sure the
XP home machine is part of the workgroup. For example, if your domain is
DOMAIN1 then just joining the xp to the workgroup DOMAIN1

hope I understood your question and hope this helps

--mark

----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Gaywood <richardgaywood@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2005 9:49 am
Subject: [Samba] Windows XP Home accessing a Samba PDC
> A friend of mine has asked me a question in my role as "biggest local
> geek" (for very small values of "local"). Googling
hasn't turned up an
> answer, so does anyone here know if this is possible?
> 
> At his business, they had a mixture of XP Home, XP Pro and Win98
> machines accessing a Samba server with security=user. The server has
> one big everyone-read-write drive and a few smaller areas restricted
> to a few users by the "valid users" directive.
> 
> This isn't at all secure though, and means whenever a person gets a
> new computer they have to mess about matching the username and
> password with the Linux server. It is also becoming a pain to manage
> as their network grows, and as they have now removed all the Win98 and
> all except two of the XP Home clients, they are wondering about
> switching Samba to become a PDC. This would allow them a lot more
> flexibility in terms of permissions on the share, even without ACLs.
> 
> Obviously, the XP Home machines will not be able to log into the
> domain. However, is there any way to allow them access to the public
> everyone-read-write anyway, even though they are not in the domain?
> 
> Thanks for your help!
> -- 
> To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the
> instructions:  https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
>