[Samba] PDC BDC should I or shouldn't I?

Quenten Griffith qgriffith at edm1.com
Thu Jul 18 06:47:05 GMT 2002


Hello everyone  I hope this is the right place to post this question.  I 
have all but eliminated all Microsoft servers in my current work 
environment, expect two boxes, which are our PDC and BDC, they also are 
the DNS, Dial in With Rocket Port Card, DHCP, Winslookup servers.  I 
would like to remove these NT boxes and replace them with a nice shiny 
new Linux box running Samba.  Reading some of the FAQ's on samba.org 
about PDC and BDC has me a bit worried and wondering if I should wait 
till version 3.0 of Samba is released.  Since I saw in one documentation 
that PDC will be fully enabled in that version.  I am wondering if any 
one has and success or horror stories with setting up a PDC with Samba. 
 My co workers will need to be able to do the following;

Log in from WIN98, WIN2K, NT 4.0 (and maybe at some point XP) *I am 
afraid I will never be able to switch workstations to Linux and I am 
stuck with Windows Products*

Change their password when it expires (with out having to log in to a 
linux box)

Map Drives and of course access them.

Have Roaming Profiles

Share Printers that are hooked up to Jet Directs

Add new machines to the network with out me having to do anything on the 
Linux box (such as with Win2k when you assign a new machine to the 
network you give it the domain controller and your username and password 
and it will add to it)

I will take care of adding new users when they come along or write a 
script that does everything automaticly.  I will also need the box to be 
able to talk to a BDC and sync up with it.  Which will be another Samba 
box.  I see this though in one of the FAQ's

"These things are not expected to work in the foreseeable future:

    *

      Trust relationships

    *

      PDC and BDC integration"

Which worries me a little.  If anyone can provide good feedback such as 
should I wait till version 3.0 of Samba comes out to try this or is this 
not doable yet or good documentation or books on this subject I would 
appreciate it.  I plan on using 2.2.5 version of Samba to try this. 
Thank you for your time, and if this is the wrong place to post this I 
apologize.






More information about the samba mailing list