[Samba] Samba Best Practices -- Integration with Active Directory

Tim Holmes tholmes at mcaschool.net
Tue Feb 22 16:31:50 GMT 2005


ood Morning Everyone:
 
This question is a bit different from the run of the mill -- HELP ME I
GOT TROUBLE questions here on the list, however I am interested in
getting this situation working correctly and also need to understand the
basis behind the process so that I can implement it properly and extend
it as necessary
 
First off -- Some Background
 
I am running a 150 station lan where all the workstations are Windows XP
Pro SP2 -- Fully patched. The Domain Controller, Exchange Server, and
Content Filter (Websense) are all Windows Server 2003 standard (updated
and fully patched).  The AntiVirus Server (Panda) is An XP SP2 Box.  The
2 Webservers (production and development) are Fedora Core 2, as is the
File Server, and Database server (MySQL).  All have been fully updated
with yum in the last week or so.
 
Currently The 2 Webservers and the File server have samba set up on
them.  This is to facilitate file movement between them and the rest of
the network.  At the present time to allow access to the samba boxes I
create a user account for the person in linux, then create a samba
account, and feed it their windows password using the
system-config-samba program.  Once this is done, they can access the
shares without any need for typing usernames and passwords, which is
great, but to my way of thinking that is a lot of steps to go through. 
 
My question is as follows:
 
Is this the proper / best way to have the integration set up, or is
there a better way.  From where I sit, and in a perfect world, when a
user tried to access a samba share, the samba server would query the
domain controller for authentication and process it, similar to
accessing a share on one of the windows boxes.  I would like to move all
my user accounts home directories to the file server, but I don't want
to take the time to input all the usernames/passwords, and then have the
problem that every time someone changes their windows password, they
loose their samba access.
 
If you have suggestions for reading, or ideas or other helpful hints, I
would be greatly appreciative.  The resources that I have read on the
net are at best confusing.  Also I am fairly new to Linux, and although
I am learning, it is going to take me a while to get all the ins and
outs of the system nailed down, so I may need some procedural help to
get things working smoothly
 
Thank you so much for your time and assistance
 
 
Tim Holmes
 
IT Manager / Webmaster
Medina Christian Academy
A Higher Standard...
 
Jeremiah 33:3
Jeremiah 29:11
Esther 4:14
 
 


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