Caution Stoopid Newbie

[Eric Pilger]

What an explosion :-)

Here are some experiences with 2.0.x from a highly UNIX centric point of view.
For years I have used SAMBA to provide access to the resources (printers and
disk) available on my Solaris machines. "Authentification" (assigning of a valid
user ID) has been unified across all workstations, first through NIS, then NIS+.
Windows 95/98/NT/2000 machines were quite happy as members of a workgroup,
joining via unencrypted passwords. I avoided encryption for many years because I
enjoyed having only one password database.

I have recently ventured into the realm of encrypted passwords. This works fine,
and allows Win NT/2000 to connect automatically (if the Win user/password match
the one stored on UNIX). I do not yet synchronize passwords, so I do have to
maintain two password databases separately.  I am now trying 2.2.0 and its PDC
capabilities. It looks like it could work, but introduces a host of small issues
which I'll need to work out, so I am not jumping in yet.

Since I have now forgotten most of the original message, I include some of the
relevant text below.

>Please could somebody clear up some confusion I have - I freely
>admit that I am a clueless newbie in both samba and linux so be warned....
>I am runing Mandrake 7.1 (if that makes a difference) and have
>managed to get samba running quite well ( verion 2.0.6) ie I
>can see shares copy files from my win98 machine and so on.
>Works perfectly. Now what I really want  (what I really really want)
>is to be able to login to the linux box from the 98 machine. So

Just what do you mean here? Aren't you already logging in? I guess the real
question is what you hope to get from SAMBA that you aren't already getting.
This leads naturally to the question "What are you getting now?"

>So far the documentation seems fairly confusing (to a newbie)
>as I understand it later versions[1] of samba support NT PDC
>type things however it suggests that the version I have will allow
>answer of what 2.0.6 will support ie I think it supports logons from
>98 logons - can somebody point me in the direction of a definitive

2.0.x supports workgroups wonderfully. From the UNIX centered viewpoint this is
all that is really necessary. However, I fully acknowledge my bias. Actually, I
can see where the PDC stuff could be useful as I get more public workstations
with multiple users. That is why I have been looking in to it.

>98 machines but doesn't do full PDC - is this correct ? If so then
>I guess there must be some differences between the two - what
>are they ?



--
Eric J. Pilger
Systems Administrator
Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology/SOEST
pilger at pgd.hawaii.edu
(808)956-6321 (Voice/FAX)