[Samba] Samba 3 + Win2k = Headache

[tms3]

Without knowing the roles of the servers, I can't understand the 
desperation of the problem.  User homes on W2k3, other stuff on 
samba--why is this a problem?

Shannon Johnson wrote:

>I have a feeling I may have lost focus on the issue in some of my
>previous messages... so here's my dilemma.
>
>I have several Windows (2000 and XP) clients, and several Linux (Red Hat
>Enterprise 3, 2.4.21 kernel) clients. I've got a couple servers, one is
>currently Windows 2000 Server, and one is Linux (same as above, with the
>snapshot Samba running). I want to be able to have users log into the
>Linux clients, authenticated through the Windows server, and access
>their home directory from the Linux server. That's the goal in a
>nutshell... Here's a very brief summary of the problems I've run into
>with all of the solutions I've tried:
>
>1. I tried having the clients use SMB to mount their home directory, but
>realized that SMB doesn't support hard or symbolic links, apparently
>despite the "unix extensions = yes" option being set. It may be that the
>"unix extensions" option only applies to cifs clients, which leads us to
>#2.
>
>2. I tried to apply the cifs patch to a couple of my Linux client
>machines, but for one reason or another, the module never wants to
>either get compiled, or be inserted into the kernel. The kernel gives me
>hundreds of errors if I try to compile it, after having downloaded the
>source right from Red Hat, in RPM format... even when I copy the
>/boot/config-2.4.21-15EL to the source directory and try to compile. 
>
>3. Having lost faith in SMB and CIFS, I moved on to NFS. However, since
>my authentication is going through the Windows server via winbind, each
>client is getting different UID's and GID's for the same user. So, I
>tried idmap_ad, after installing the Services for Unix 3.5 on the
>Windows server, but can't get the clients to pull the UID and GID we set
>on the server. It keeps using its own local algorithm and coming up with
>its own UID/GID. I've tried removing the winbindd_idmap.tdb and
>winbindd_cache.tdb, and setting the "idmap backend =
>ad:ldap://servername" in the smb.conf, but to no avail.
>
>4. We're currently considering dropping the Samba server altogether,
>since nothing we do seems to work, but even that's causing problems. To
>get it to work, we have to use NIS for authentication, and access all
>the home directories via NFS. This all apparently requires much
>configuration on the Windows server, and is causing me headaches...
>besides, being an anti-Microsoft guy, I feel like I'm abandoning my
>brethren in Linuxland.
>
>I'm very open to suggestions... I've just about exhausted all the
>options I can think of... so if anybody has any advice, please let me
>know.
>
>Shannon
>
>____________________________
> 
>Shannon Johnson
>Network Support Specialist / Systems Administrator
>Dept. of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering
>224 Reber Building
>University Park, PA 16802
>Phone: (814) 865-8267
>____________________________
> 
>
>  
>