samba - Jan 2006 - what to do in worst case scenario: samba pdc not available

Hi,

my question no really concerns 100% to Samba but since I use Samba ...
I use Samba 3.0.13 as an PDC and have about 40 WinXp Pro Clients.
I was wondering what happens if the WinXP Pro Clients won?t have any 
connection to the Samba Server anymore. Maybye due an error in the 
network or the PDC died for some reason.
Is there any way to quickly change the clients profile to a local 
profile? I don?t have profile roaming enabled. All I want is that the 
users can access/login to their profiles if the Samba PDC wouldnt be 
available anymore ....
Thanks a lot
regards,

> Hi,
>
> my question no really concerns 100% to Samba but since I use Samba ...
> I use Samba 3.0.13 as an PDC and have about 40 WinXp Pro Clients.
> I was wondering what happens if the WinXP Pro Clients won?t have any
> connection to the Samba Server anymore. Maybye due an error in the
> network or the PDC died for some reason.
> Is there any way to quickly change the clients profile to a local
> profile? I don?t have profile roaming enabled. All I want is that the
> users can access/login to their profiles if the Samba PDC wouldnt be
> available anymore ....
> Thanks a lot
> regards,
> --
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>
Try this:
Log into a workstation locally (not via the domain).
Create a local user on that workstation a la compmgmt.msc using the same
login name as the domain user.
copy the existing domain users's "documents and settings" contents
into
the new users's "documents and settings" folder.
change ownership of any files in that folder so that the new user owns
them, or at least make sure that the new user has full rights to modify
all of those files.  cacls can take care of the rights for you easily
enough, although I prefer setacl http://setacl.sourceforge.net/ which can
change ownership as well.

Log out as admin, and log in as the local user.  See what happens.  :)

On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 17:57 -0300, Martin Miethe wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> my question no really concerns 100% to Samba but since I use Samba ...
> I use Samba 3.0.13 as an PDC and have about 40 WinXp Pro Clients.
> I was wondering what happens if the WinXP Pro Clients won?t have any 
> connection to the Samba Server anymore. Maybye due an error in the 
> network or the PDC died for some reason.
> Is there any way to quickly change the clients profile to a local 
> profile? I don?t have profile roaming enabled. All I want is that the 
> users can access/login to their profiles if the Samba PDC wouldnt be 
> available anymore ....
As Windows normally caches the login credentials, nothing happen unless
you deactivate caching. The last user will be able to login normally.
You can set the size of the cache too somewhere in the registry to allow
for more or less user credentials to be cached.
By default it shouldn't allow to cache domain administrators
credentials, but that shouldn't normally be a problem on a user machine.

Simo.

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 17:57:36 -0300 Martin Miethe
<mmiethe@protourschile.com> wrote:

MM> Hi,
MM> 
MM> my question no really concerns 100% to Samba but since I use Samba ...
MM> I use Samba 3.0.13 as an PDC and have about 40 WinXp Pro Clients.
MM> I was wondering what happens if the WinXP Pro Clients won?t have any 
MM> connection to the Samba Server anymore. Maybye due an error in the 
MM> network or the PDC died for some reason.
MM> Is there any way to quickly change the clients profile to a local 
MM> profile? I don?t have profile roaming enabled. All I want is that the 
MM> users can access/login to their profiles if the Samba PDC wouldnt be 
MM> available anymore ....
MM> Thanks a lot
MM> regards,


In a typical office environment with XP default settings you don't
need to do a thing even with roaming profiles, without is only better.
It works, so to say, out of the box.

In an environment where people use differents workstations almost
everytime, where local copies of roaming profiles are deleted at logoff 
or  folder redirection to the PDC is used
the only viable solution is to fix the PDC A.S.A.P. or even faster


Expert from MS docs:

Interactive Logon: Number of previous logons to cache (in case a domain
controller is not available).

 Windows 2000 Server and Windows XP Professional store previous user logon
information locally so that a subsequent user can log on even if a domain
controller is unavailable. This setting determines how many unique previous
logons are cached. If a domain controller is unavailable and a user?s logon
information is stored, the user is prompted by this message: ?A domain
controller for your domain could not be contacted. You have been logged on
using cached account information. Changes to your profile since you last
logged on may not be available.? If a domain controller is unavailable and
a user?s logon information is not stored, the user is prompted by this
message: ?The system cannot log you on now because the domain DOMAIN NAME
is not available.? In this policy setting, a value of 0 disables logon
storing. Any value above 50 stores only 50 logon attempts. The default
value is 10 logons.