PDC user authentication

[Wilson Yau]

Dear all Samba Gurus,

Recently, I have looked into the possibility of the complete replacement
of NT4 server by deploying Samba.

As an experiment, I am trying to configure a Linux box running Debian
Potato with kernel 2.2.15 as a Samba server, which will eventually
emulate a NT PDC.  On top of that, I am running NT4 workstation client
by using VMware 2.0.

I first started with the latest production version 2.0.7a, but
encountered some problems when came to the PDC implementation.  After
consulting some resources from books (e.g. Using Samba, O'Reilly) and
several web sites (e.g. http://www.ping.be/linux-and-samba/ ), I decided
to get the latest development version from the cvs site of samba.org so
as to get the best PDC support.  The one I've got is
'release-alpha-2-5-3'.  The source codes have been successfully
compiled.  Although I could make the NT domain logon live,  the same
problems persist.

There are two main problems:

1./  When different users has been logged in and out of the NT client,
the late users can actually browse the home directories of the previous
ones;

2./  When a user logs in, an error message pops up saying 'The operating
system was unable to create profile directory \\mole\Profiles\%U.pds.
You will be logged on with a local profile only....'.  This looks like
something is wrong with the logon path in the [global] section or the
path specified in the [Profiles] service.

I tried to search the mailing list archive -
http://us1.samba.org/listproc/samba-ntdom, but the URL could not be
found.  Therefore, I decided to subscibe this mailing list to learn more
and hopefully someone can give me a helping hand.


FYI, my server is called 'mole', my workstation is 'koala' and NT Domain
name is 'YAU'

Here are the main settings in my smb.conf file:

[global]
   workgroup = YAU
   netbios name = mole
   server string = %h (Samba Server %v)
   guest account = smbguest

# Debug Level
   log level = 2

   security = user
   encrypt passwords = yes
   unix password sync = false

   local master = yes
   os level = 255
   domain master = yes
   preferred master = yes
   domain logons = yes

   logon home = \\%L\%U
   logon path = \\%L\Profiles\%U
   log file = /usr/local/samba/var/log.%m
   max log size = 50

[homes]
   comment = Home Directories
   browseable = no
   guest ok = no
   read only = no
   create mask = 0700
   directory mask = 0700

[Profiles]
    comment = Windows-User-Profiles
    path = /usr/local/samba/profiles
    browseable = no
    guest ok = yes
    writeable = yes


I have created the /usr/local/samba/profiles directory manually, and it
attributes are as follows:
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Jun  5 14:00 profiles

If you need more information, please let me know.

Many thanks for your help!

Wilson Yau