NT Domain and Samba as a PDC

[Gerald Carter]

Paul L. Lussier wrote:
> 
> What I'd like to do is slowly sneak away from them by 
> implementing a Samba PDC and creating my own domain here.  

Just a standard disclaimer.  The PDC support is not official
yet.  Be warned and be careful.

> My question is, is it easier to set up a real WinNT server to 
> be the PDC and have accounts on it, and have Samba authenticate 
> against that, or, would it be easier to begin creating
> Unix accounts for everyone and just have Samba authenticate 
> against NIS.  Obviously my preference is the later :)

You have to use encrypted paswords for the PDC support.

> My concerns however, are password changing/aging, etc. and 
> the use of user profiles.  I have John's book, but that 
> was written around 1.9.18 and doesn't include the PDC stuff 
> in 2.0.x.

My advice is to read the NT Domain FAQ linked off the Samba 
web site under documentation and to join the samba-ntdom 
mailing list (see http://samba.org/listproc for instructions 
on this).

> I haven't downloaded the 2.0.x stuff yet.  Are the docs 
> that come with it sufficient to get me where I need/want to 
> go today :)  Or should I wait for the O'Reilly book due 
> out rsn.

Three books due out soon (late April i think for all).

* O'Reilly book
* New Riders book
* Sams Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours

Can't speak to the content of the first two, but since I wrote 
a lot of the material for the last book, I can make references 
about it.

Two chapters in particular you may be interested in.  

* One is specifically on the **experimental** PDC support 

* The other is how to replace an existing NT file and 
  print server (including usergs and group access lists) 
  using Samba 2's security = domain option.




Hope this helps,
jerry
SAMBA team
________________________________________________________________________
                            Gerald ( Jerry ) Carter	
Engineering Network Services                           Auburn University 
jerry at eng.auburn.edu             http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/cartegw

       "...a hundred billion castaways looking for a home."
                                  - Sting "Message in a Bottle" ( 1979 )