[Samba] Having Samba integrate/replace existing mixed Unix/Windows network

[Fran Fabrizio]

Hrmm.  It seems that this (from the HOWTO) puts a MAJOR damper on things....

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Samba can act as a NT4-style DC in a Windows 2000/XP environment. However, 
there are certain compromises:
·       No machine policy files.
·       No Group Policy Objects.
·       No synchronously executed AD logon scripts.
·       Can't use Active Directory management tools to manage users and 
machines.
·       Registry changes tattoo the main registry, while with AD they do 
not leave permanent changes in effect.
·       Without AD you cannot perform the function of exporting specific 
applications to specific users or groups.
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Considering my goal #6....

6.  Preserve as much of the functionality that Active Directory is
>>currently providing.  This includes login scripts, roaming profiles, all
>>the permissions management and authentication, serving a dfs, etc....I
>>understand that Samba cannot be an Active Directory server, but I also
>>understand that it can do a lot of the same things AD does.

So...no login scripts and some of these other things (policy files, temp 
changes to the registry that get wiped at logout, etc...) are common on our 
network.  Almost all of our Windows clients are XP.  Do you truly lose the 
ability to do all of those things, or can you do older, NT-style versions 
of some of them by having the XP clients fallback into NT domain 
compatibility?

-Fran