[Samba] Migration from Windows 2003 server to samba 3

[Jonathan Johnson]

To my knowledge, it's not possible to migrate the passwords from Windows 
to Samba, and vice-versa. This is because Windows and Linux both use 
one-way hashes to encrypt the password; there's no way to decrypt the 
password. Unfortunately, Windows and Linux use different algorithms to 
encrypt the password, so you can't just copy the encrypted password 
between systems, like you could if you were going Windows-to-Windows or 
Linux-to-Linux.

What I'd recommend is assigning the passwords on paper ahead of time, 
getting them out to people with appropriate instructions , and then 
requiring the password be changed at the first logon once you go live 
with it.

(Sample instructions: "You have been assigned the temporary password of 
RgYx7e# -- you must use this temporary password on or after 
such-and-such date; after this date your old password WILL NOT WORK. 
When you log in with the temporary password on or after such-and-such 
date, you will be required to change it before you will gain access to 
your desktop. After you change the password you will use the new 
password you create from then on -- your old password and the temporary 
password will no longer work")

If I'm wrong, I hope I'll be corrected.

~Jonathan

M.R.Niranjan wrote:

>Hi all
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>I have windows 2003 server with Active directory users , there are about 500
>users. I have an Linux Server with Redhat Enterprise Linux Advanced server 3
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>With samba 3.0 installed in . I would like to migrate all active directory
>users to samba 3.0 making it a primary domain controller and shut down the 
>
>Windows system. But I would like to know, how do I migrate users passwords
>from Active directory to samba 3.0. I would like to retain the same username
>and 
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>Passwords as in windows. So how do get the passwords from windows to samba
>3.0
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>Regards
>
>Niranjan
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