UNIX/NT passwd sync: Confused

[Andrew Perrin - Demography]

As the previous response said, there's no way to copy passwords directly
from /etc/passwd to smbpasswd.  However, there are several different hacks
people have put together to try to simulate the process.  Also, what we
did was just create random passwords for users in smbpasswd, then e-mailed
those passwords to the users and told them to change them if they found
them hard to remember (most of them did).  You might check the list
archives at http://samba.anu.edu.au/listproc for the various ideas people
have had.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J. Perrin - aperrin at demog.berkeley.edu - NT/Unix Admin/Support
Department of Demography    -    University of California at Berkeley
2232 Piedmont Avenue #2120  -    Berkeley, California, 94720-2120 USA
http://demog.berkeley.edu/~aperrin --------------------------SEIU1199

On Fri, 14 Aug 1998, Cemal AKYEL wrote:

> Hi everyone. I've got samba server running on Solaris 2.6 as PDC and
> everything runs ok. NT 4.0 (sp3) client can join to the domain. The
> password mode is "encryption allowed". Now, I've got ~2,500 users that i
> need to define on the server. Username/password information of these
> users are kept in a UNIX style passwd file. As i understand from the
> documentation i need to mksmbpasswd.sh first to create the smbpasswd
> file.But this file won't have any passwd information (32 X's rather). As
> i understand either
>  * i need to initiate these accounts one by one by the command smbpasswd
> (so then the users will have different passwords than their originals)
> OR
>  * set encrypt passwords=no and update encrypted=yes AND make use of the
> original passwords and as the users login to the domain smbpasswd file
> will updated.
> 
> the point that i'm confused is if i follow the 2nd alternative will my
> client pc's (NT 4.0 sp3) be accepted to the domain (as indicated in the
> NTDOM faq encrypted passwds should be used for this purpose)? Is there
> any program that *fully* (including the original passwords) converts
> (translates) UNIX style passwd file into smbpasswd?
> 
> i'm sure this was asked before. sorry for the duplication. i'll
> appreciate if someone could show me the way.
> 
> thanks.
> 
> --
> Cemal AKYEL
> 
> mailto:akyel at man.metu.edu.tr
> http://www.man.metu.edu.tr/~akyel
> phone: +90 (312) 210-2004
> fax: +90 (312) 210-1243
> 
>