[Samba] How to set up a multi-subnet Samba network

[Bill Moran]

On Sunday 03 March 2002 00:37, Alex Dawson wrote:
> At 7:14 PM -0500 1/3/02, Bill Moran wrote:
> >Additionally, persistent network connections to other servers do
> >not work at all.
> >We're considering putting all the servers in the same domain and
> >setting up a PDC/BDC system.  The only concern is the network
> >traffic this will cause across the wireless links when people log in.
> >(Windows always tries to log into the PDC first, correct?)
>
> No, windows uses the BDC for authentication last I checked. The idea
> being that there are multiple BDCs for each domain, so that people
> can authenticate to them, and load them thru the roof if need be,
> while the fileserver stays on the PDC and can respond to file
> requests with the minimum of system overhead.

Hmmm ... so it broadcasts for the BDC first?

> >So ... first off, does anyone have any comments on pros/cons of this
> >approach?
>
> Yes, samba 2.2.3a doesn't support either replicating to Windows BDCs
> or Samba BDCs. The recommended way of doing it is to have multiple
> machines running samba, using the same synced userlist, and work out
> some way to load share.

It's pretty easy, you just setup rsync scripts to propogate the smbpasswd
files, the /etc/passwd database is already propagated via NIS.

> >Does anyone have a better approach?
> >Does anyone know how much traffic results from a network login?
>
> I would personally run it as one domain, and see what happens from there.

Hmmm ... problem is I'm not sure if I have a way to test this first, and I don't
want to risk downtime by trying to switch it over without having tested it first.

Do you happen to know how much traffic is created by a login request ... in
case the clients always log in to the PDC?

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technology technical services
http://www.potentialtech.com