PDC AND SAMBA

[Steve Langasek]

Hello Kai,

> >       I have my LAN setup with 2 NT servers as PDC and BDC. My linux box
> > is a member of the PDC with DHCP ip address. I ran samba in the hope that
> > usernames in my linuxbox can use the same password as the PDC password
> > list on the password server(pdc). when samba ran it had become the pdc
> > automatically . All i added was the password server address to the pdc
> > intranet ip in smb.conf and ran a smbpasswd on my local users.  

> Hm.. I don't know what the os level option does to the DC functionality, but
> there is an option for samba becoming domain master browser, and in smb,
> this has the same machine code (or whatever this is called) as the PDC. IIRC
> it's <1B>. So you should set all the preferred master, domain master options
> to no and set os level to 0.

> > My question is 
> > why did'nt the PDC on NT Server let my linux box take over as PDC
> > especially when i didnt supply any network-admin username/password in my
> > smb.conf

> If my way of thining is right, you just had your samba set up to win all
> browser elections. So it would just have the same code (this <1B> thing) as
> the PDC of yours..
> Perhaps one of the gurus has a better idea, though..

Actually, netbios id <1B> is not determined by election: this is a netbios
name that is registered with the WINS server.  There is no reason for this to
be elected, since the domain master browser / PDC should be a stable,
centrally-administered machine.  You must configure an NT server to be a PDC.
When it boots up, it will check to see if domain<1B> is registered with the
wins server.  If it's registered, NT spits out an error message and doesn't
become a PDC.  If it isn't registered, it registers the name with its own IP.

If Samba has 'domain master = yes' set in smb.conf, it will register
domain<1B> with *its* IP -- /regardless/ of whether or not there's another PDC
on the network already.

Setting 'domain master = no' is enough to fix the problem.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer