samba problems in a school

[Sean Fichera]

I have been working with samba for about 10 months now.  I am having a
problem.  I am using SUSE 9.2 and the latest samba.  I have a PDC setup
and machines log into a domain.  The problem is some installs work and
some don't.  I am using a combination of things to administer samba,
swat, webmin, yast, control center.  I am trying to figure out what is
causing the problem.  I would like to stop using all of these different
forms of administration but I am farily new to linux and I am not a
programmer.  I don't know how to write a script or anything like that.
I have hundreds of users every year to set up on various servers.  I
have a way to do a batch setup of unix users in webmin but I don't know
any other way to do that and I have samba setup to sync unix usernames,
passwords, and groups.  I also need to export the list of users and
their encrypted passwords for a backup.  So in conclusion It would be
great if someone could help me with the following problems..
 
*	What is causing the problems (and sometimes acutal changes to my
smb.conf)
*	How do I do a batch import of users?
*	How do I export all users with their encrypted passwords
*	How do I import users and clear text passwords (this is big - I
need to match webmin I have made a conversion utility in MS Access that
takes info from a student management system and convert it to the format
I need to import in webmin)
 
BTW I am using a samba password file as the backend
 
If anyone out there has a way to distribute policies to windows boxes
using a policy editor (not poledit) I need to push interent settings and
redirect my documents.  I would rather not make a profile on a
workstation and push it up to the netlogon folder like I am doing now.
Making changes is difficult.
 
Thanks
Sean
Salem School District