[Samba] Computer accounts & Win2K

[mdt-tech-mailbox at shaw.ca]

Hi all,

I've seen a good number of posts over the last while relating to 
problems with Win2K clients being unable to authenticate users to a 
Samba 2.2.x PDC (user level security with encrypted passwords) 
because "the system's computer account in its primary domain is missing 
or the password on that account is incorrect".  So far I have not run 
across any solutions.

It seems that in all cases the computer accounts have been created 
*correctly* on the unix machine using first useradd then smbpasswd as 
described in the Samba documentation.

Adding the computers to the domain (system properties -> network ID -> 
properties) seems to work:  the user is prompted for a username and 
password with privileges sufficient to change the computer name in the 
domain, then is informed that a reboot is required for the changes to 
take effect.  After reboot, however, the above error message is 
displayed when an attempt is made to log a user (any user, including 
root) on to the domain.  *No* log info is generated by the Samba server.

Since I have seen no responses whatsoever to any of the posts about 
this issue, I have two specific questions which might help me to 
identify the problem myself:

1. What is meant by the computer's *primary* domain?
2. What *exactly* transpires when (a) one changes the name of a Win2K 
client in the domain (ie. adds the *machine* to the domain) and (b) 
when a user attempts to logon to a domain from a Win2K machine that has 
a valid machine account in the domain?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Mike Traynor.