[Samba] Samba DC Backup Best Practices

Chris Nighswonger
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:34:34 -0000

I recently suffered the misfortune of a corrupted winbindd_idmap.tdb file
on my Samba PDC. Since we run several other Samba servers (file, print,
proxy, etc.) as well as around 50 Win32 clients, the recovery and clean up
was a pain. I'm glad we do not have 1000 clients...

To this point I was not running a BDC. I realize now that this was probably
a bad thing. However, in addition to adding a BDC, are there any "best
practices" for backing up critical Samba files in an effort to make
recovery "easier?" I have read a multiplicity of opinions offered to
me by
the oracle at Google, but am wondering if the Samba community has some
established best practices.

It was sort of nightmarish having 50+ users sitting around waiting for
their network to be fixed, and I'd rather not go that way again so feel
free to tell me how stupid it was to not have addressed this before. ;-)

Samba: 3.6.6
Ubuntu: 10.4.4 LTS

Kind Regards,
Chris