[Samba] Is the PDC always needed?

[Jorell]

On 3/26/2012 9:27 AM, David Noriega wrote:
> Maybe my understanding is flawed but I thought the purpose of the BDC
> was in the case of the PDC going offline, users could still use the
> system. Just this morning our PDC failed with bad memory, yet users
> were unable to map their network drive. The PDC is in our office while
> the file server is in the server room where its been setup as a domain
> member. On the server room subnet is its own BDC with its own ldap
> server. Checking the logs I see that the server room BDC is listed as
> the local domain server. The only thing that comes to mind is the BDC
> does point to the PDC as the wins server. Is that the issue? Is there
> a way around it?
>

The PDC/BDC controls logging onto the network.
Network file shares are different, what server was hosting the "network 
drive"? If the PDC also hosted the network drive then they would also go 
down.