Caution Stoopid Newbie

[Jet Set Willy]

> What do you mean by 'log in' to the samba box?  Do you mean authenticate
to
> it?  Or are you just trying to access the entire box itself and not just
the
> shares?  If you are doing authentication, 2.0.6 won't cut it.

hmm I think I mean authentication - sorry for being so unsure of my
terminology as well as unsure of what I am doing.

When I boot the win98 box - I have set
up the networking to log in to a particular domain and I was/am hoping that
I can get samba / linux to manage this.  At the moment I have an NT box
that is set to be PDC for the domain and this handles the login requests.
My ultimate aim is to remove this NT box and replace it with a suitably
set up samba (From reading the docs and some of the replies here it is
obvious that the version of samba I have will not quite do this - I am just
not sure how far off it is and whether or not it will make a difference to
me.)
Also as I understand it samba can be set up so that when a request to access
a
share is made samba can check the priveleges / rights against another
machine ie I have two linux machines and one is set to use the other for
authentication. I guess what I am trying to say is that I am aiming for
one list of users on the network rather than a list of users / groups
on each machine.

> YOu'll need
> the 2.2.0-alpha3 code (the latest and greatest) in order to make samba act
> as a PDC.

I am not sure if I have the knowledge to do that just yet :-)
The book I have bought does go thru it so I guess at some
point I will be able to give it a go but at the moment I am
still feeling smug that I managed to get the thing working at
all while trying to ignore the little voice that is telling me I
don't even know the scale of the amount I have yet to learn.....


> 2.0.6 supports authenticating of almost ANY (win2k excluded I believe)
> version of windows as long as there is an NT Domain controller available
to
> handle the auth request from the samba box.  Of course it needs to be part
> of an NT domain in order to do that, which is in the docs.  Without an NT
> domain, it's just like any other peer-to-peer network in so much as you
have
> to add each user to the samba box that needs access to it.  Unless you use
> NIS or another central authenticating mechanism.  Let me know if this
helps
> or not.

Ok I do have a NT Domain controller but would rather not ! I do already have
it all
in the same domain so I guess it sounds like I need to have a read of the
NIS
how-to ?

Finally Yes it has helped - thanks for replying so promptly. To be honest I
have only
just started learning about linux / Open source etc and am stunned by the
quality
and volume of stuff available - to a newbie it is quite overwhelming. Until
you find
newsgroups / mailing lists you tend to feel miles out of your depth.

Thanks
JSW.