[Samba] PDC & file server on same machine?

[John Heim]

From: "Adam Tauno Williams" <awilliam at whitemice.org>
>  With Samba3 domain control there isn't really a BDC/PDC distinction.
> Every box is a PDC that operates in parallel with the other DCs.  That
> is a bit different than a true NT4 domain.
>

But one machine has to have the master copy of the user/machine database.
>From the samba documentation:

* Primary Domain Controller the one that seeds the domain SAM.
* Backup Domain Controller one that obtains a copy of the domain SAM.

On my file server, I have a custom add user script that configures mail,
sets a disk quota, configures the user's profile, and several other things.
That script has to run on the file server or it can't create all the proper
directories,e tc. That's why I also made that machine the PDC. Its the only
machine with the ability to update the ldap database. If I made some other
machine the PDC, I'd have to have2 machines with the ability to update the
ldap database. In my configuration, the BDCs are also slave ldap servers. So
when a user logs into the domain, I *think* it will talk to a BDC which will
query its own copy of the ldap database, and log them on.



But if being the PDC adds significantly to the load of the file server, I
could give up on the idea of having just the one machine with the ability to
update the ldap database. Having only one machine with update abilities is
cleaner but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.