Demote Windows Server and promote Samba

Rowland Penny repenny241155 at gmail.com
Thu Jul 30 16:14:44 UTC 2015


On 30/07/15 16:38, bogdan_bartos wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I asked this before, but I did not get an answer. Is it possible to demote a
> Windows PDC and promote a Samba server as PDC? I understand that the PDC has
> the FSMO roles enables. What is the exact process in this case? I suppose
> you need to join the Windows domain with samba4 and let it replicate. Sync
> the sysvol, then you need to activate the FSMO roles in samba and promote it
> as PDC.
>
> I would need step by step instructions with commands. This would also make a
> great entry in the samba tutorial since most of the people will actually
> want to replace a Windows PDC with a Samba PDC.
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://samba.2283325.n4.nabble.com/Demote-Windows-Server-and-promote-Samba-tp4689218.html
> Sent from the Samba - samba-technical mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

Hi, it might help if you stop calling the windows DC a PDC, there is no 
such thing as a PDC in Active Directory! There is a FSMO role called 
'PDC emulator' but this really has nothing to do with an NT-4 style PDC.
With AD there is the first DC you provision and then there are other 
DC's, the only real difference should be in what DC holds what FSMO role.

See here: 
https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Flexible_Single-Master_Operations_%28FSMO%29_roles

You are correct, you can just add a samba4 DC to a windows AD Domain, 
transfer the FSMO roles from the windows DC and then demote it. The only 
problem is, at the moment, there isn't a tool to transfer all the 7 FSMO 
roles, there are work arounds (a .vbs script for one). If you can wait 
until samba 4.3.0 comes out (or you backport fsmo.py) then you should be 
able to transfer all 7 of the FSMO roles.

Rowland




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