managing users from smbpasswd rather than /etc/passwd

[Christian Barth]

> > From my experience, Samba needs a login to exist in /etc/passwd in order
> > to be possible to have it in smbpasswd.
> 
> That's the crux of what I was asking.  And the answer that I didn't want to
> hear :-(
> 
> Pity it can't be a (configurable) "either-and-or" situation.
> 
> > The Unix password in /etc/passwd (or shadow) is irrelevant, though. You
> > might even make all Samba users un-loginnable, shell-wise (by assigning
> > then bogus passwords).
> 
> Yes, this part is ok, but with around 200-300 new user accounts about to be
> created - all of who will only have (and need) samba access, managing them
> from /etc/passwd is a real PITA.
> 
> I would much rather manage these people from /etc/smbpasswd (wherever it
> may live) and leave /etc/passwd alone for managing REAL unix accounts.
> 
> I'm not sure if any of the developers are listening (I'm only new to the
> list), but can this be a suggestion to put into the TODO list?

This problem has been diskussed before (may about 6 Weeks ago, may be 
in samba-ntdom). The main ponits are (as far as I remenber, I'm not a 
developer):
- Unix needs a User-ID to maintain the owners of the files stored in 
  the shares. If you want to have seperate owners you need seperate 
  User-ID's.
- The unix user-id's are maintained in /etc/passwd
- There has to be a mapping of NT-Rid's to Unix-Uid's. This is quite 
  complex (and as far as I know, good guys are working on it.)
- If you have ../smbpasswd and /etc/passwd on the same system it  
  should not be that much work to write a skript/program to maintain 
  them in your individual way.

Christian